U.S. employers added 156,000 jobs in September, less than expected, and unemployment rose to 5 percent, from 4.9 percent, according to today’s Labor Department report.

Jobs growth has averaged 178,000 a month so far this year, down from last year’s pace of 229,000.

But there was positive news in wages — the average hourly earnings increased 0.2 percent over August, and were up 2.6 percent over September 2015.

Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson speaks with Michael Regan of Bloomberg Gadfly about what we should take away from this month’s report.

With reporting from The Associated Press.

Guest

Mike Regan, columnist for Bloomberg Gadfly. He tweets  @Reganonymous.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.