Jobs data, a lot of upside was from gov't jobs to Sept and accounted for all of the revisions

September payrolls grew by 336k, about double the estimate and the two prior months were revised up by 119k (ALL DUE TO AN INCREASE IN GOVERNMENT as private sector downward revisions totaled 12k in the two prior months). Helping the headline print was a 73k person increase in government hiring (mostly at the state level) as the private sector added 263k of the 336k, though still well above the estimate of 160k. More muted was the household survey as it reflected hiring of 86k and combined with a similar rise of 90k in the size of the labor force, the unemployment rate held at 3.8%, the highest since January 2022. The U6 all in rate was 7% vs 7.1% in August and vs 6.7% in July.

Hours worked were unchanged at 34.4 and hourly wages grew by .2% m/o/m and 4.2% y/o/y, both one tenth less than expected. Combining the two has average weekly earnings higher by .2% m/o/m and 3.5% y/o/y. The participation rate held at 62.8% as it did for the 25-54 yr old cohort at 83.5%. The employment to population ratio also was unchanged at 60.4%.