US private payrolls increased more than expected in September as private payrolls increased by 143,000 jobs after rising by an upwardly revised 103,000 in August, according to a Reuters report, but October labour market could be complicated by strikes involving machinists and dockworkers.
The release of the National Employment Report on Wednesday followed government data on Tuesday that showed there were 1.13 job openings for every unemployed person in August compared to 1.08 in July.
The information industry shed 10,000 positions, the only sector to report job losses. Last month’s job gains were spread across medium-sized and large businesses.
Locally, Malaysia’s labour market is largely viewed as “stable” and “robust”. According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), the country’s unemployment stood at 3.3% in July 2024 as the industrial production increased by 5.3% and Manufacturing Output rose by 9.1%.
However, the outlook for the US labor market in October is cloudy amid an ongoing strike by about 30,000 machinists at Boeing. Additionally, dockworkers on the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast walked off the job on Tuesday. Should these strikes continue past mid-October, they could have a detrimental impact on payrolls for the month.
“If the Boeing strike and the port strike last through the second week of October, job growth for October could be negative given the number of workers on strike and the likely number of non-union workers laid off because of the strikes,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.
