A Cooling Job Market Finally Reaches South Jersey’s Kitchen Tables

The number that landed Friday morning was small, and that was exactly the problem. The U.S. economy added just 29,000 jobs in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported — a fraction of the roughly 45,000-a-month pace of the past year, and well under what economists had penciled in. The national unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2 percent, from 4.1, which translates to about 7.1 million people looking for work.

For months, South Jersey has been running on a kind of cautious momentum. Hiring was slower than the boom years but steady. Friday’s report, and the revisions buried beneath it, suggest that steadiness is thinner than it looked. The government sharply lowered its earlier counts: August was cut from 162,000 jobs to 133,000, and July — originally reported as a modest gain of 21,000 — was revised all the way down to a loss of 10,000. Add it up and the summer that felt merely sluggish was actually weaker than anyone realized while they were living through it.

Where it hits home

Where the softness showed up matters for this region. Health care, which has carried the national jobs numbers for two years and is one of the largest employers in our own backyard, added only about 17,000 positions in September — roughly half its recent average. When you consider how much of South Jersey’s paycheck base runs through Cooper, Virtua, Jefferson and the nursing and home-care outfits that feed them, a cooling health-care sector is not an abstraction here. Financial activities lost ground too.

The timing is awkward. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates last month, and anyone in Camden, Gloucester or Burlington County who has shopped for a mortgage lately has felt the result — borrowing costs sitting at their highest level in nearly three years just as a first-time buyer finally saved enough to try. A weak jobs report now sharpens the argument that the central bank may have leaned on the brakes a touch too hard, and it hands the next rate decision a very different backdrop.

One month is one month, and 4.2 percent unemployment is still, by historical standards, a healthy labor market.Mason Carter

Waiting for a signal

None of this is a siren. One month is one month, and 4.2 percent unemployment is still, by historical standards, a healthy labor market. But the small-business owners I talk to along the White Horse Pike and the Black Horse Pike have been telling me the same thing since late summer: they are not laying off, but they are not hiring either. They are waiting. Friday’s report is a reminder that a lot of South Jersey is waiting right along with them — and that the thing being waited on, a clear signal about where the economy is headed, did not arrive this morning.

Based on reporting from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics September employment report, CNN, NPR and Forbes.