The US economy added 661,000 jobs last month, as the unemployment rate fell to 7.9 per cent, highlighting the slowdown in the recovery of America’s labour market in the final stretch of the presidential election campaign.
The data released on Friday is the final monthly update before the November election and means Donald Trump will be shouldering the worst September jobless rate of any incumbent US president in postwar history.
The figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that American employers continued to restore some of the jobs they lost during the initial pandemic-related shutdowns, but at a significantly weaker pace compared to the summer months.
In July and August, the US economy created on average 1.6m jobs per month, compared to the 661,000 in September — and America has now recovered just 11.4m of the 22.2m positions it shed between February and April.
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