Finally, we are starting to get some clues about how this labor market is doing.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabree Beneshaw in for David Brancaccio.

After a month and a half delay because of the government shutdown, we are finally, only now, getting some official economic data.

It is old. It is from September,

but it is here. The economy gained 119,000 jobs that month. The unemployment rate went up for the third month in a row to 4.4%. Diane Swank is chief economist at Audit Tax Advisory firm KPMG,

and is here to talk about it. Hi, Diane.

Good morning. So the economy gained 119,000 jobs all the way back in September a lifetime ago.

On the other hand, the job gains for July and August, even older, were revised down. So it now looks like the economy lost jobs in August.

What does this mean for people out

there wondering how secure their job is or how hard it would be to find a new one?

We also saw the unemployment rate edge up slightly, even though participation picked up,

those who were participating were not finding jobs. And we did see a big pickup in college grads looking for jobs and teens looking for

jobs. Now, the team participation rate, that is one that's a little bit susceptible to major

changes in seasonal factors because September is when people come back to school and they often

drop out of the labor market so that bump up in teenage participation

could be a bit of a one-month phenomena, and certainly this is all before the government

shutdown and the collateral damage due to that.

The Federal Reserve needs data like this to figure out what to do with interest rates,

should lower them, raise them, keep them as is. There's already a lot of disagreement on

that. Does this old data help? It doesn't help them lower interest rates,

but it isn't enough data because it is prior to the shutdown. And the Fed has already made clear

that they are going to be short of data. We know some data will not be published at all, like the

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