by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Hurricanes in September & October and the Boeing strike will mess with labor market data for a few months; the Fed won’t get clear answers.
Three hurricanes – Francine in early September, Helene in late September and early October, and Milton in mid-October – and the heavy rains and flooding that came with them temporarily shut down work sites in a substantial part of the country, which is going to throw a lot of additional uncertainty over the labor market data for the next few months.
We’ve already seen this play out in the weekly initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims, which react the fastest: They spiked for the late September to early October period as many work sites were temporarily closed, then subsided again.