A 17-month low of 263,000 new jobs were created in the United States in September
persistent labour shortages and steadily declining demand for new employees as recession talk intensifies.
The hiring growth was the weakest it has been since April 2021 and it came just shy of Wall Street forecasts.
The Wall Street Journal surveyed economists, who predicted 275,000 additional jobs will be created.
Meanwhile, the government reported that the jobless rate decreased from 3.7% to 3.5% on Friday.
That lowers it to a level seen before the epidemic and is one of the lowest rates seen since the late 1960s.
Yet the Federal Reserve is continuing to quickly raise interest rates in an effort to combat the biggest inflationary outbreak in 40 years, despite the slowdown in hiring.