Huge drop in hiring in this month. Just 661,000 new jobs in September, down from 1.5 million in August.

Obviously gonna be the big story of the morning.

Could be a bad news is good news situation though. If markets tumble, creates pressure for a stimulus deal.

Early on, my theory about slowing job growth was that we'd essentially picked the low hanging fruit when it came to industries. Office workers returned, service workers could only trickle back.

But I think...

...there might also be a low-hanging fruit issue with states too. Early re-openers like Texas and South Carolina have made the easy progress. Cautious states like New York are holding back though.

Also, my regular update on this

Oof, the employment rate for 25-to-54 year olds actually fell last month. Real bad sign.

Take that, add the fact that more than 7M people are out of the labor force but say they want a job, and it seems to me that the unemployment rate is no longer that useful indicator of what's really happening. Thoughts @ernietedeschi @ModeledBehavior @nick_bunker @marthagimbel?