Welcome to the NewsHour. Job growth was better than expected in September with 119,000 new jobs added. Those were the best job gains since April.

The unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent, its highest level in four years, as about half a million people re-entered the labor force.

The official report comes seven weeks late after the

government shutdown, making it the first federal snapshot of the labor market since agencies reopened.

But key economic data is still missing, and questions remain about the true strength of the

economy. The uncertainty now lands squarely on the Federal Reserve as it prepares to consider another rate cut.

Austin Goolsby, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, is one of the officials weighing that decision.

I spoke with him earlier today.

Austin Goolsby, welcome back to the News Hour.

Yeah, thank you for having me, Jeff.

And let's start with your reaction to the September jobs report, looking at the numbers,

slightly better than expected, solid hiring, but the unemployment rate creeped up a bit.

What's your read on what this report is actually saying about the direction of the economy?

Well, better late than never.

You know, we're not getting this number until well after when we normally

would have gotten it. So a little bit, it's a misleading indicator of where things are headed

because it's out of date. But I think mostly the numbers show that job markets remained steady in an unusual low hiring, low

firing kind of environment.

So normally if you have low hiring, you have high firing and high layoffs or the reverse.

But here, whether because there's a lot of uncertainty or for other

reasons, we're in a moment where the unemployment rate remains fairly low by historical standards

is gradually cooling, but overall pretty steady, I think. You mentioned the delay in getting the September jobs report.

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