The Labor Department’s recent Jobs Report shows that 114,000 new jobs were created in September with 104,000 coming from private sector gains. This number was lower than expected though the good news is that the jobs numbers for July and August have been revised to a much higher number.
More good news has come out recently thanks to reports that the unemployment rate fell .3% to 7.8% from 8.1% back in August. This is the lowest unemployment rate since January of 2009. To further understand the state of the economy and get a better picture of where we are at, it’s critical to look at the Labor Force Participation Rate, or LFPR. the LFPR improved, but only slightly, by .1% to 63.6% but it continues to remain near thirty-one year lows.
Additionally, September’s Jobs Report states that the economy is producing between 125,000 and 140,000 per month which falls short of keeping up with the population growth. This contributes to the reason of why the Fed announced another round of Bond buying, or Quantitative Easing (QE3) back on September 3, which intends to stimulate the economy.
The important thing to remember in light of recent news is that while home loan rates are continuing to remain near historic lows, the goal of QE3 would potentially cause home loan rates to rise.