OVERNIGHT MONEY: Jobs are the only game in town

By Vicki Needham - 10/04/12 06:10 PM ET

FRIDAY'S BIG STORY:

Jobs report goes into late innings: At 8:30 Friday morning all eyes will turn to the Bureau of Labor Statistics to see if job creation hits a bloop single or a home run.

If all goes as forecast, the latest report will show that the economy created 115,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate ticked up to 8.2 percent, amounting to something more along the lines of a walk, if you're keeping score.

That would be better than the 96,000 added in August, which came in below expectations.

The economy has added jobs every month for nearly two years but not at a fast enough clip to bring down the unemployment rate, which has remained north of 8 percent for the entirety of President Obama's first term.

So continued sluggish growth in the labor market really isn't unexpected, even if it is disappointing, especially with businesses saying they won't have an appetite to hire until Congress gets its act together and crafts a solution for the fiscal cliff issues of spending cuts and tax increases in the lame-duck session.

During a Wednesday night debate, Obama touted his job creation numbers — nearly 5 million jobs have been created during the past two years, but that is still less than half of what was lost during the recession. More than 3.5 million were lost between March and December 2008, and another 818,000 were shed in January 2009, the same month Obama took office.

But Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he wants a turn at the plate, arguing his policies can revive the struggling economy while Obama's ideas have failed.

Whether the jobs report — there is only one more before the election — provides a boost for either candidate remains to be seen.

Because the estimates are relatively conservative, the report probably won't produce any surprises, up or down, that would favor either candidate.

But that won't mean that Romney won't deem the report a strike out for Obama's policies or that the president's camp won't sell the gain as a base knock that reflects a a gradually improving economy making strides against the backdrop of a deep financial crisis.

The stagnant labor market is reflected in slowing layoffs — new filers for unemployment benefits rose by 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 367,000, from an upwardly revised 363,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The four-week moving average, which is a better indicator of the job market's trend, was unchanged, at 375,000.

Congress is set to return the week after the November elections to begin work on, at least, a short-term solution, which would likely lead to an extension of all current policy until the details are worked out next year.

In a separate report released Wednesday, ADP Employer Services said the private sector hired 162,000 workers in September, a figure that will probably be above the government's estimates of 125,000.

Let's play ball.

ECONOMIC INDICATORS

Consumer Credit: The Federal Reserve releases its August measure of consumer debt.

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