US hiring fell 33,000 in September, depressed by hurricanes

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. shed 33,000 jobs in September because of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which closed thousands of businesses in Texas and Florida and forced widespread evacuations. It marked the first monthly hiring decline in nearly seven years.

The unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent from 4.4 percent, the Labor Department said Friday, the lowest level since February 2001 and a sign that the job market remains fundamentally solid. Hiring is expected to rebound in the coming months as businesses in the area reopen and construction companies ramp up repair and renovation work.

Last month’s drop was driven by huge losses in restaurants and bars, which shed 105,000 jobs, a sign of the damage to Florida’s tourism industry. Roughly 1.5 million people were unable to work last month because of the weather, the government said, the most in 20 years.

Hourly workers who couldn’t work and missed a paycheck would have been counted as not working, thereby lowering September’s job total. That’s true even if those employees returned to work after the storm passed or will return.

The unemployment rate fell because it is calculated with a separate survey of households. That survey counted people as employed even if they were temporarily off work because of the storms. In fact, the proportion of adults who have jobs rose to 60.4 percent, the highest since January 2009.

Average hourly wages rose a healthy 2.9 percent from 12 months earlier. Still, the government said that figure was artificially inflated by the loss of so many lower-paid workers in hurricane-hit areas. The result was that higher-paid workers disproportionately boosted the wage figure.

More than 11 million people had been employed in the 87 counties in Texas and Florida that were declared disaster areas, the government says. That’s equal to about 7.7 percent of the nation’s workforce.