Where The September Jobs Were: Waiter And Bartender Devastation

The September jobs report was a bizarre exercise in “goalseeked” data: from the first drop in Establishment Survey payrolls in 7 years, to the near record monthly surge in full-time jobs and Household Survey employment, to the erroneous calculation in average hourly earnings, virtually everything about the latest payrolls report was off.
Still, accurate or fabricated, here is the breakdown of the seasonally-adjusted job gains and losses that took place in the hurricane-impacted month.
As SouthBay Research points out, the biggest sign of Hurricane drag was found in Leisure and Hospitality which plunged by -111K, a drop due to a loss of 105K waiter and bartender jobs: the one category that for the past 7 years was the “plough hourse” of the so-called US recovery; this was the worst monthly drop in history for this category.

And while we find it delightfully ironic that in the one month in which waiters/bartenders lost the most jobs on record is when average wages (allegedly) soared, the September drop will be revised in the coming days and should move higher next month. After all, many people fleeing Florida and Houston had to stay in hotels and motels, for example. And certainly eat out more.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Oct 6, 2017.