Will they or won't they?

                                      Comment due by Nov. 20, 2015

The risks of the Federal Reserve moving too quickly or too slowly are nearly balanced, New York Fed President William Dudley said Thursday, pointing to a rate hike on the horizon.Dudley, a voting member of the Fed and vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, emphasized, however, that a December liftoff depends on incoming data. Echoing comments from his colleagues, he said that the pace of tightening will be "quite gradual" once the Fed begins raising rates.The central banker said the strong October jobs report should "partially put to rest" concerns that the U.S. labor market might be faltering, adding that the country is much closer to maximum employment than it was at the start of the year.Some labor slack remains, Dudley said, explaining that he has still not seen compelling evidence that the tightening jobs market is leading to more rapid compensation gains.

Dudley also addressed earlier concerns that global economics could impact the Fed's decision, saying the international outlook appears less problematic than it did a few months ago.

On the inflation front, the New York Fed president said that, if the economy continues on its above-trend pace, then worries about low inflation should begin to recede. Core inflation, he added, should rise once transitory factors dissipate.

Dudley said he thought the fundamentals supporting U.S. domestic demand look "quite sturdy" and the housing fundamentals are solid. He did predict, however, that the trade sector will probably continue to drag on growth in 2016.

Chicago Fed President Charles Evans also spoke Thursday, saying the central bank is close to reaching its employment target, but it could be "well into" next year before the goal for inflation is reached to support a rate hike.

Once the Fed initiates liftoff, he said, an appropriate strategy would be to raise the target rate gradually.

Evans is a voting member of the FOMC, which meets next month to decide on whether to raise interest rates for the first time in nine years.

In remarks prepared for delivery to the Manufactured Housing Institute in Chicago, Evans said it could be well into next year before headwinds from lower energy prices and a stronger dollar dissipate enough to allow for sustained upward moment in core inflation.

"The outlook for inflation remains too low," he said. "A gradual path of normalization would balance both the various risks to my projections for the economy's most likely path and the costs that would be involved in mitigating those risks."

"It has been dumbfounding to me," Evans later reporters after his speech, of how little the inflation outlook has changed over the past several years, even as the U.S. economy has strengthened.

While Evans expects U.S. growth of about 2.5 percent in the next 1½ years, he said housing is one part of the economy that still has a good way to go. Progress in that area, he said, has been slow and uneven.

On the other side of the equation, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said Thursday the Federal Reserve's unemployment andinflation goals have been met, and there is no reason to continue to "experiment" with policy extremes.

Bullard, in prepared remarks, said the near-zero interest-rate policy has put the U.S. economy at "considerable risk of future inflation."

Fed Chair Janet Yellen also spoke Thursday, although she did not comment on the outlook for the U.S. economy or her thoughts on monetary policy decisions.

Yellen, kicking off a research conference on policy transmission and implementation after the 2007-2009 financial crisis, said the central bank must weigh the effects of post-crisis financial regulations and new channels through which policy affects markets as it prepares to raise interest rates. She added that the Fed must also weigh the disadvantages of its actions in light of new tools meant to help the Fed raise rates.

Fed "policymakers should be mindful of new channels for monetary policy transmission that may have emerged from the intricate economic and financial linkages in our global economy that were revealed by the crisis," she said in prepared remarks.

"It is crucial to understand the effect of regulations and possible changes in financial intermediation on monetary policy implementation and transmission," Yellen added.

Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker also spoke Thursday, saying he continues to hold the view that monetary policy has the unique ability to determine inflation over time. Still, he said, caution should apply to the notion that policy should respond to signals of incipient financial instability.

Monetary policy's ability to affect real economic activity can be quite limited and is almost always short-lived when well-executed, he said.

The rate hike has been stymied in part by low inflation that continues to run below the Fed's 2 percent target rate, and some policymakers have advocated waiting for more signs that inflation will rise before embarking on a path of monetary tightening.

Lacker, who has twice voted this year to raise rates when the rest of his colleagues decided to stay put, said the recent behavior of inflation "does not warrant such pessimism." But he added that the credibility of such an inflation goal "depends on the public's belief that the central bank has and will use the tools necessary to make inflation return to its goal, should that become necessary."  (Reuters)

How to Fix the American Economy

                        

                                                           Comments due Nov. 13, 2015

In his new book, a Nobel laureate outlines how the huge disparity arose and the huge course correction needed to address it.  Stiglitz, a Nobel-prize winning economist, professor at Columbia University, and the chief economist at the Roosevelt Institute, asks the question “Can the rules of America’s economy be rewritten to benefit everyone—not just the wealthy?” The answer, he insists, is yes. Stiglitz describes the current situation as “ a stark picture of a world gone wrong” : He notes that 91 percent of all income growth between 2009 and 2012 was enjoyed by the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. In the first half of the book, Stiglitz focuses on the practices and policies that have gotten the country to this point. It is a familiar story: The demise of labor unions, the increasing financialization of the economy, and the lack of wealth-building opportunities in minority communities have made the rich richer while leaving everyone else to flounder. He lists off a bevy of other contributors too: weak wages, ineffective regulation and federal oversight, and a focus on short-term versus long-term growth, which embodies a preference for rewarding shareholders over workers and consumers. Stiglitz also notes that despite advancements in technology, which should— in theory—increase efficiency and lower costs, consumers are paying more in fees for financial services, which enriches big banks and companies while siphoning money out of the middle class. All of these things, he says, have created a society with a gaping hole, not only in its economic makeup, but in its morality.

Stiglitz spends the latter portion of the book laying out how to fix things. Like his primer on how inequality came to be, the solutions cover everything from fiscal policy to corporate boardrooms to retirement savings. His overview doesn’t prioritize pragmatism: A solution that only involves overhauling the few things that everyone agrees need to be overhauled is no solution at all, he argues. Instead, he swings for the fences, suggesting a massive revision in the way the U.S. economy does business. First up is the attempt to tame what is called rent-seeking—the practice of increasing wealth by taking it from others rather than generating any actual economic activity. Lobbying, for example, allows large companies to spend money influencing laws and regulations in their favor, but lobbying itself isn’t helpful for the economy besides creating a small number of jobs in Washington; it produces nothing but helps an already rich and influential group grow more rich and more influential. Stiglitz suggests that reducing rent-seeking is critical to reining in inequality, especially when it comes to complex issues such as housing prices, patents, and the power that large corporations wield. To overhaul these behaviors and the policies that support it, Stiglitz says that America should give up what he deems the “incorrect and outdated” belief in supply-side economics, which grows from the premise that regulation and taxes dampen business opportunities and economic growth. Instead, massive changes to tax laws, regulations, and the financial sector are needed, he says, in order to curb rent-seeking. For instance, increasing tax rates, ending preferential treatment for top earners, and refining the tax code would decrease incentives to amass extreme amounts of wealth, since it would be so heavily taxed, and that tax would be difficult to shirk. Stiglitz suggests a 5 percent increase to the tax rate of the top 1 percent of earners—a move that he says would raise as much as $1.5 trillion over 10 years. He also calls for a “fair tax, ” which would eliminate preferential tax treatment for money earned from capital gains and dividends—perks enjoyed primarily by people who can afford to own a lot of stock. To further ensure that corporations, markets, and individuals aren’t pursuing profits at the expense of workers and the public, Stiglitz calls for a more active central bank. He accuses the Fed of being both too narrowly focused on macroeconomic indicators, and too deferential to the businesses and markets it has the ability to regulate. He wants the government to sponsor a homeownership agency that would dole out housing loans in a way that encourages buyers instead of developers and would closely monitor the market for fairness. Stiglitz ’s thoroughness is admirable, but his prescriptions can be overwhelming, given how much it would take to make each change. The agenda also includes emphasizing the goal of full employment rather than focusing on the sometimes reductive unemployment figures; investment in public infrastructure; better access to financial services, childcare, health care, and paid leave; and strengthened opportunities for collective bargaining. Oh, and better wages for workers, and more corporate transparency, too. Actually implementing all of these changes would require a complete shift in American policy and practice. The world that Stiglitz envisions in his book, one where all citizens can enjoy the promise of education, employment, housing, and a secure retirement seems at once like the realization of the American dream and an unattainable utopia.

This is what an Inflation feels like.

                                 Comments due by Nov. 6, 2015

 Pity the bolívar, Venezuela’s currency, named after its independence hero, Simón Bolívar. Even some thieves don’t want it anymore.

When robbers carjacked Pedro Venero, an engineer, he expected they would drive him to his bank to cash his check for a hefty sum in bolívars — the sort of thing that crime-weary Venezuelans have long since gotten used to. But the ruffians, armed with rifles and a hand grenade, were sure he would have a stash of dollars at home and wanted nothing to do with the bolívars in his bank account.

“They told me straight up, ‘Don’t worry about that,’ ” Mr. Venero said. “ ‘Forget about it.’

The eagerness to dump bolívars or avoid them completely shows the extent to which Venezuelans have lost faith in their economy and in the ability of the country’s government to find a way out of the mess.

A year ago, one dollar bought about 100 bolívars on the black market. These days, it often fetches more than 700 bolívars, a sign of how thoroughly domestic confidence in the economy has crashed.

The International Monetary Fund has predicted that inflation in Venezuela will hit 159 percent this year (though President Nicolás Maduro has said it will be half that), and that the economy will shrink 10 percent, the worst projected performance in the world (though there was no estimate for war-torn Syria).

That would be a disastrous drive off the cliff for a country that sits on the world’s largest estimated oil reserves and has long considered itself rich in contrast to many of its neighbors.

But the real story goes beyond numbers, revealed in the absurdities of life in a country where the government has refused for months to release basic economic data like the inflation rate or the gross domestic product.

Even as the country’s income has shrunk with the collapsing price of oil — Venezuela’s only significant export — and the black market for dollars has soared, the government has insisted on keeping the country’s principal exchange rate frozen at 6.3 bolívars to the dollar.

That astonishing disparity makes for a sticker-shock economy in which it can be hard to be sure what anything is really worth, and in which the black-market dollar increasingly dictates prices.

A movie ticket costs about 380 bolívars. Calculated at the government rate, that is $60. At the black-market rate, it is just $0.54. Want a large popcorn and soda with that? Depending on how you calculate it, that is either $1.15 or $128.

The minimum wage is 7,421 bolívars a month. That is either a decent $1,178 a month or a miserable $10.60.

Either way, it does not go far enough. According to the Center for Documentation and Social Analysis of the Venezuelan Federation of Teachers, a month’s worth of food for a family of five cost 50,625 bolívars in August, more than six times the minimum monthly wage and more than three times what it cost in the same month a year earlier.

Dinner for two at one of this city’s better restaurants can cost 30,000 bolívars. That is $42.85 at the black-market rate or $4,762 at the official exchange rate.

Inflation has gotten so bad that auto insurance companies have threatened to issue policies that expire after six months, to minimize the risk from the soaring cost of car parts.

A gallon of white paint cost almost 6,000 bolívars on a recent Tuesday. At the same store on the following Friday, it cost more than 12,000 bolívars.

With crucial legislative elections scheduled in December, the government has begun to make refrigerators, air-conditioners and household electronics available to government workers and the party faithful at rock-bottom prices. One government worker said he had bought a Chinese-made 48-inch plasma television for 11,000 bolívars, or just $15.71 at the black-market exchange rate.

Mr. Maduro blames an “economic war” waged by his enemies, foreign and domestic, for the country’s problems. But most economists say the problems are caused by the fall in oil prices and by the government’s policies, including strict controls on prices and foreign exchange for imports.

A recent filing by the Venezuelan government to the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States indicated that imports last year were barely half of what they were in 2012. That means fewer products on store shelves, less medicine in hospitals and fewer materials for manufacturers to produce goods here — all leading to widespread shortages and higher prices.

But as the crisis has unfolded, Mr. Maduro has been hesitant to make changes that even top officials say are needed, like raising the price of gasoline, which is so heavily subsidized by the government that it is virtually free to consumers — perhaps because he is fearful of a backlash before the elections.

Meanwhile, things are getting stranger by the day.

Need a new car battery? Bring a pillow, because you will have to sleep overnight in your car outside the battery shop. On a recent night, more than 80 cars were lined up.

Want a new career? Plenty of Venezuelans have quit their jobs to sell basic goods like disposable diapers or corn flour on the black market, tripling or quadrupling their salary in the process.

Need cash? O.K., but not too much. Some A.T.M.s limit withdrawals to the black-market equivalent of about $0.57.

Given the chronic shortages of basic goods, supermarkets and pharmacies often fill long rows of shelves with a single product. One store recently had both sides of an aisle filled with packages of salt. Another did the same thing with vinegar. A pharmacy had row after row of cotton swabs.

But among all the shortages here, one of the most notable is a shortage of paper money, especially the coffee-colored 100-bolívar notes that are the largest in general circulation (black-market value, about $0.14) and feature a portrait of Simón Bolívar.

This shortage is surprising, because the government has been printing money at a phenomenal clip to finance its operations and pay its employees. Central Bank of Venezuela data show that the bills and coins in circulation more than doubled during the 12 months ending in July, which economists say is one of several forces driving inflation.

“You want to understand why there’s a lot of money and there’s no money?” Ruth de Krivoy, a former Central Bank president, asked with a rueful laugh. She said the main problem was that the government had failed to respond to rapidly rising prices by issuing larger-denomination bills, such as a 1,000- or 10,000-bolívar note. So people need many more bills to buy the same goods they bought a year ago.

Also, as people resort to the black market to buy more goods that cannot be found in stores, transactions that could once be made with debit or credit cards are now being made with cash. That creates logistical problems, as banks must move around huge amounts of paper money and A.T.M.s empty out more quickly.

“There is a myth that by printing larger notes, they would acknowledge or validate inflation and higher prices,” Ms. de Krivoy said.

Mr. Maduro is certainly aware of the symbolic impact of issuing larger bills with more zeros — and the inevitable comparison it would strike with his predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chávez, who was president for 14 years. In 2008, Mr. Chávez issued new bills and knocked off three zeros from a currency that had long suffered from devaluation and inflation, renaming it the strong bolívar.

Today, the bolívar is anything but strong.

Different banks have different rules, but most limit individual A.T.M. withdrawals to 2,000 bolívars, or $2.86 at the black-market rate. They also set a daily maximum withdrawal that is generally two or three times that, so customers frequently make multiple withdrawals, one after the next, leading to long lines at the machines.

There are even stricter limits on withdrawals using debit cards from another bank. Some A.T.M.s limit such withdrawals to 400 bolívars, or about $0.57 on the black market, enough to buy a dozen eggs.

The other day, Jaime Bello, an airline mechanic, visited his bank, the government-run Banco del Tesoro, only to find that its three cash machines were out of money. He recalled an earlier visit when he went to withdraw 2,000 bolívars and stood listening to the whirring sound as the machine counted out the bills. To his astonishment, it spit out a great stack of 5-bolívar notes, each worth less than an American penny. He pulled out the stack of 200 bills and then waited while the machine counted out 200 more.

"It's crazy," he said. "We're living a nightmare. There's nothing to buy, and the money isn't worth anything."

The cash crunch extends to people who bypass the A.T.M.s and go to the bank teller.

On a recent Friday, Milton Valverde hefted a black New Balance gym bag stuffed with 2,000 pink 20-bolívar notes, worth a total of about $57 at the black-market rate.

Mr. Valverde, a carpenter, said his boss sent him from bank to bank, with two bodyguards, to fill up the bag by cashing checks from clients — all to make the weekly payroll.

The crisis has also meant opportunity for those willing to stand in long lines to buy cheap government-regulated goods that they can resell on the black market.

"I said to myself, 'I can make more doing this,' and I quit my job at the hair salon," said Geraldine Cassiani, who left her job as a manicurist in February to sell goods on the black market. She said she now earned four to five times what she had before.

On a recent trip to the supermarket, she used contacts in the store to skip the line outside and bought four packages of disposable diapers, even though shoppers were supposed to be limited to two each. She already had a "client" lined up to buy the diapers for almost three times what Ms. Cassiani had paid: a nurse who could not take time off from work to stand in line to buy them.

Mr. Maduro regularly goes on television to denounce black marketeers and to blame them for shortages and high prices. Ms. Cassiani acknowledged that she was sensitive to such criticism.

"Partly, I think that what I'm doing is bad," she said, adding that she did not raise prices as much as some black marketeers. A single mother, she said she had to do what she could to provide for her child.

"Necessity has a dog's face," she said.

María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.

Negative Interest Rates?

                                          Comments due by Oct. 30, 2015 

When the Federal Open Market Committee decided in September to leave its main policy rate where it’s been for seven years—close to zero—it included an extraordinary detail. According to the “dot plot,” the display of unattributed individual policy recommendations, one committee member believed that the rate should be below zero through 2016. That is, rates should go to a place the U.S. has never had them before.

In theory, it shouldn’t be possible for a central bank to keep short-term interest rates below zero. Banks would have to pay the Federal Reserve to hold reserves. Consumers would have to pay banks to hold deposits. Banks and people can hold physical cash, which charges no interest. This is why economists see zero as the lowest possible rate. It’s just theory, though; real-world experience shows the actual lower bound is somewhere below zero.

Denmark’s key bank rate dipped below zero in 2012 and is at minus 0.75 percent. Economists recently surveyed by Bloomberg see negative rates in that country continuing at least into 2017. Switzerland has kept the rate at minus 0.75 percent since early this year, and Sweden’s is minus 0.35 percent. These countries have a different monetary goal from that of the Fed. Denmark and Switzerland have been working to remove incentives for foreigners to deposit money in their banks. Massive foreign inflows would drive their currencies to appreciate so much they would become seriously misaligned with the euro, the currency of their main trading partners. Sweden has been attempting to create inflation.

The strategy has had some success. Denmark has been able to hold on to its peg to the euro. Switzerland dropped its euro peg, and after an initial runup, the Swiss franc has traded within a predictable band. Sweden’s inflation has seesawed.

In all three countries, banks were reluctant to pass negative rates on to their domestic customers. In Denmark deposit rates have fallen, and some banks have raised fees for their services, but “real rates for real people were actually never negative,” says Jesper Rangvid, a professor of finance at the Copenhagen Business School. The same is true for Sweden, according to a paper by the Riksbank, the central bank. In Switzerland, one bank, the Alternative Bank Schweiz, will impose an interest charge on retail deposits starting in January.

There’s no evidence of a flight to cash in any of the three countries. According to central bank data, Danish households have added 28 billion kroner ($4.3 billion) to bank deposits since rates shrank to their record low on Feb. 5. That’s because a sack of bills has to be stashed somewhere safe, and protection costs money. According to Rangvid, rates would have to drop as low as minus 10 percent before people start “building their own vaults.” In its paper, Sweden’s Riksbank pointed out the same possibility but declined to say how far below zero rates would have to go to trigger depositors’ exit from the banks in the largely cash-free country.

In the U.S., Narayana Kocherlakota, the dovish president of the Minneapolis Fed, has expressed support for negative rates as an option. (He’s likely the anonymous negative rate dot-plot guy.) So has John Williams of the San Francisco Fed. William Dudley of the New York Fed, a moderate, said during an Oct. 15 event that the FOMC had considered negative rates during the depths of the financial crisis. Experience in Europe, he said, showed that the unintended consequences of negative rates were “less than what people had feared.”

Since they dropped rates below zero, there has been no clear, consistent economic trend among the three countries. In Denmark asset prices have risen as Danes sought higher returns. Spurred by speculation, the local stock market has recorded more than twice the gains of the Stoxx Europe 600. Danske Bank, Denmark’s biggest lender, says Copenhagen is becoming Scandinavia’s riskiest property market, because of a surge in prices. Danish businesses have increased their investments only 6 percent; private consumption has risen 5 percent. According to Torsten Slok, Deutsche Bank’s chief international economist in New York and a Dane, negative rates “raise risks in the short term and do little more to help the economy than what can be achieved with bond purchases.”

In Switzerland there’s little sign of overheated property or stocks, or new consumption. Recently, Thomas Jordan, head of the Swiss National Bank, saw potential side effects but called negative rates an “important and unavoidable monetary instrument to weaken the attractiveness of the [Swiss] franc.”

All three countries have dipped below zero without massive withdrawals. That’s a valuable lesson for economists. But in Sweden, it’s too early to tell whether negative rates have created inflation. And in Denmark and Switzerland, this tool has succeeded only in its precise and limited purpose: to manage exchange rates with the euro. That finding will be of limited value to the Fed.

—With Peter Levring, Nick Rigillo, and Catherine Bosley

Is paid family leave inevitable?

                                                           Comment due by Oct. 23, 2015

Presidential candidates are talking about paid family leave — both for and against it — because they know this issue is top of mind for voters throughout the country. For American voters, family comes first. Whether it's for a newborn, an ailing parent, or a spouse nursing an injury, being there and providing for family isn't negotiable.

The question is whether we as a nation are going to let every family fend for themselves, or adopt a national solution that makes sure that putting family first doesn't mean losing your paycheck or your job. Voters are demanding policies that reflect this priority. 

"It's about time we had paid family leave for American families and join the rest of the world," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her opening remarks at the first Democratic debate.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders echoed: "We should not be the only major country that does not provide medical and — and parental leave — family and parental leave to all of our families."

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley built on the idea: "We would be a stronger nation economically if we had paid family leave."

The three Democratic front-runners are not the only ones speaking to this issue. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who's running in the Republican primary, has come out with his own paid family-leave proposal (albeit a severely flawed one), and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorinadevoted an entire blog post to defending her position against paid family leave.

Recent polling by "Make it Work," a campaign I co-founded to advance women and working families' economic issues, found that 75 percent of voters say they support a package of work-family policies that includes paid family leave, paid sick days, equal pay, affordable child care and a higher minimum wage. Fifty-six percent of voters said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports this plan.

And it's not just women. Fifty-five percent of men say they are more likely to vote for candidates who support this plan. The number of men who use the job protections of the current Family and Medical Leave Act to care for family members has been slowly but steadily increasing, and more and more men are calling for employers to adopt paid parental leave policies.

Paid family leave and other family-friendly policies are good for children, good for families, good for public health and, as Gov. O'Malley noted, good for the economy. In the states that have adopted paid leave – California, New Jersey and Rhode Island – both employers and employees report benefiting from the law. And in recent months, we've heard from companies like Netflix, Microsoft, Adobe, LinkedIn,Facebook, Google and others about their recently adopted generous paid leave policies for moms and dads. These policies aren't always perfect, but the idea that companies should be providing these supports for families – from 12 weeks to 52 weeks of fully paid leave – comes from the understanding that these policies are not only the right thing to do, but also good for business and retaining great employees.

We can't rely on companies to do it alone, or too many people will be left behind – especially low-income families who need paid leave the most. That's why presidential candidates are taking the matter into their hands. In the Democratic debate, Sec. Clinton pointed to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) as a champion of this issue. The Family Act, the bill championed by Gillibrand and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), would guarantee paid leave to care for new children and those with serious illnesses. With the right candidate, paid family and medical leave could finally become a reality in 2017. 

Commentary by Vivien Labaton, co-founder and co-director of MakeIt Work

What's the real unemployment rate?

                                                             
                                                     Comments due by Oct. 16, 2015

The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate stayed at 5.1 percent in September — but does that tell the real story?

Most economists look beyond the "main" unemployment rate to other figures that can give a more textured view of the employment situation. On jobs day, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out a slew of figures, each of which provide their own view of the economy.

One of those figures is the U-6 rate. Many economists look to the U-6 rather than the main unemployment rate (also know as the U-3). The BLS defines U-6 as "total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force," plus all marginally attached workers.

 U-6 rate: 16.7%Bureau of Labor Statistics

In other words, the unemployed, the underemployed and the discouraged — a rate that remains stubbornly above prerecession levels.

The U-6 rate dipped in September to 10 percent, the one bright spot of the jobs report. The overall trend in the U-6 has been more volatile than the main unemployment rate and it's down 170 basis points over the past year, versus an 80-basis-point drop in the U-3.

 Unemployment rate: 6.7%● U-6 rate: 12.6%Bureau of Labor Statistics

The jobs report this month has particular importance because of the Fed's dependence on data for its decision on raising rates. The Fed declined to raise rates in September as many had predicted, but had hinted that a rate hike in 2015 was still likely.

The nation added 142,000 jobs in September, just 2 percent higher than in September 2014.

One ongoing cause for concern in the jobs report has been the area of wages. Average hourly wages increased 2.2 percent on a year-over-year basis in September; weekly wages inched up 2.4 percent.

 Change in average weekly wages: 0.88%● Change in average hourly wages: 2.07%Bureau of Labor Statistics

When the unemployment rate declines, average wages typically rise as employers have to compete for a smaller pool of job candidates.