September jobs report badly misses expectations

REPORT: Employment growth in September much lower than expected

The government's tally of new jobs showed employment-growth, in September was much lower than expected. FOX 26 Business Reporter Tom Zizka is looking at the numbers.

HOUSTON - The government's tally of new jobs showed employment growth, in September, was much lower than expected. 

At a time when there are millions of job openings across the country, the Labor Department reports employers added just 194,000 thousand people to payrolls in September. 

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That's less than half what was projected.

"It is a challenge to get a handle on things," says Workforce Solutions economist Parker Harvey, "It's certainly disconcerting that we have two back-to-back months, at the national level, of pretty weak job growth."

Job creation, in August and September, significantly lagged behind expectations. Most recently, the Labor Department says the drag came from a loss of education-related employment. 

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While the national unemployment rate slipped to 4.8%, that lower number comes from people 'leaving' the labor force through retirements, exhausting unemployment benefits, or choosing 'not' to look for something new in the face of continuing pandemic concerns. 

"It looks like the Delta variant may have won out, this month," says Harvey, "You couple that with the same thing happening the month before; that is concerning."

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Locally, the employment picture is a little more complicated. The area is still missing more than 130,000 jobs from pre-pandemic levels, as challenges in the energy sector drag down related industries. 

"We're having a harder time than other areas because 'our' manufacturing is a function of oil and gas," argues Harvey, "If oil & gas isn't participating in the recovery, then manufacturing won't either."

One positive note, in the September report, shows paychecks are getting larger; up 4.6% year-to-year.
Local challenges will continue, however. 

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Parker Harvey expects the Houston metro to take at least another year to rebuild its employment picture, assuming there are no more developments to slow the growth.