The latest jobs report shows that the U.S economy added more jobs than expected in September — but unemployment is at a four-year high. 

The September jobs report, released Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after a nearly seven-week delay, showed that the U.S. economy added 119,000 jobs in that month. This number was significantly higher than the consensus estimate of 50,000 jobs expected and higher than the 4,000 jobs lost in August after a downward revision. The total was also greater than the 72,000 jobs added in July.

Employment in healthcare and food services increased in September, with over 35,000 jobs added to each sector. 

However, the report showed that unemployment ticked up from 4.3% to 4.4%, the highest level since October 2021. The number of unemployed people, at 7.6 million, was higher than it was a year earlier at the same time, when the number stood at 6.9 million. 

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The jobs report also showed that average hourly earnings increased by 0.2% for the month, slightly below the forecast of 0.3%. Year-over-year, average hourly earnings rose by 3.8%, which was above the expectation of 3.7%.

“The September jobs report may be backward-looking but offers reassurance that the labor market wasn’t crumbling before the government shutdown,” Nancy Vanden Houten, lead economist at Oxford Economics, told The Guardian. 

This is the first BLS jobs report since the August report, which the agency released on September 5. The lack of data was due to the record 43-day government shutdown. During this shutdown, key agencies such as the BLS and the Bureau of Economic Analysis could not collect or report on economic data, which delayed the release of jobs reports, per CNBC. 

This report is significant because it provides the first update on employment and economic conditions since the shutdown ended on November 12.  It is also the final monthly jobs report that the Federal Reserve will see before its final Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting of the year on December 9 and 10. 

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Houten told The Guardian that the Federal Reserve will likely keep interest rates unchanged at the 3.75% to 4% range at the December meeting, even after this jobs report. 

“There is nothing in the data to warrant a change to our forecast for the Federal Reserve to leave [interest] rates unchanged at the December meeting,” Houten told the outlet. 

BLS is not releasing an October jobs report because it does not have the necessary data. The agency said on Wednesday that it will reveal the November jobs report on December 16, nearly two weeks later than initially expected, due to the shutdown.