The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the September jobs report Friday morning. The economy added 29,000 nonfarm payroll jobs, far below the forecast of 84,000 and well below the prior twelve-month monthly average of 45,000. The unemployment rate rose to 4.2 percent, up from 4.1 percent in August, with 7.1 million people counted as unemployed. The BLS also revised downward its July and August figures by a combined 60,000 positions, including a revision that turned July’s previously reported gain of 21,000 into a net loss of 10,000 jobs. CNN reported the full breakdown of Friday’s numbers.
Health care led the sectors with 17,000 jobs added. Financial activities shed 7,000 positions, extending a decline of 129,000 in that sector since May 2025. Average hourly earnings rose 0.1 percent in September and 3.0 percent year over year. Treasury yields fell on the news and stocks rose modestly, with markets betting that weak labor data reduces pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise rates further.
The Fed has been watching labor market numbers closely since its rate-hiking cycle resumed. In 2022, it started raising rates from near-zero in the fastest tightening cycle since Paul Volcker’s campaign against 1970s inflation. Volcker broke inflation’s back, but the rate hikes also triggered recessions in 1980 and again in 1981-82. The current approach has aimed for a narrower result: rates high enough to restrain inflation, not so high as to produce what Volcker produced. Friday’s numbers suggest the labor market is feeling the pressure. Whether the Fed sees that as reason to hold, cut, or wait a little longer before deciding is the question that will occupy most of the next several weeks. CNBC covered the market reaction and what analysts expect from the Fed.
A FlyDubai co-pilot allegedly attacked the captain of Flight FZ1073 in the cockpit Wednesday morning, stabbing him as the plane flew from Dubai to Tel Aviv with 174 people on board. The aircraft plunged more than 17,000 feet in under two minutes before passengers and crew overpowered the attacker. The captain, despite serious injuries, managed to open the cockpit door and enable the intervention. The plane made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. The captain, an Indian national, was transferred to Abu Dhabi and was reported to be recovering. NBC News and CNN followed the incident through Thursday.
The suspect, described by Israeli officials as an Omani national, was transferred to the UAE for investigation. UAE authorities are examining whether the attack was linked to terrorism. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the suspect had undergone Islamist radical indoctrination. President Trump suggested a link to Iran without providing evidence.
After September 11, 2001, the aviation industry added reinforced cockpit doors and strict access protocols specifically to prevent unauthorized entry from outside the flight deck. Those changes addressed the threat of an external actor. The FlyDubai incident raised a different question, one the post-2001 security architecture wasn’t designed to answer: what the system looks like when the threat is already on the other side of the door. France 24 covered the cockpit security implications and the history of crew-related incidents.
The Supreme Court agreed Thursday to hear a major case on the Trump administration’s policy of mandatory detention for migrants, including people who have lived in the United States for years, without a bond hearing. The Court took up the case two days after separately allowing the administration to continue deporting migrants to third countries, meaning nations other than the migrant’s home country, without giving those individuals an opportunity to argue they face persecution or torture in the destination country. Under a series of agreements, some of them not publicly disclosed, the administration has deported roughly 25,000 people to more than two dozen countries, including Liberia and Guyana. NPR reported the third-country deportation ruling and what it permits.
The ACLU, which brought the mandatory detention challenge, noted that 90 percent of federal judges who have considered the question have ruled the government’s interpretation wrong. The new Supreme Court term opens Monday. Formal arguments will be scheduled once the docket is set. CBS News reported on the Court’s agreement to take the case.
Russia launched one of its largest strikes on Ukraine’s power grid in months on Wednesday, hitting energy infrastructure in Kyiv and several other regions as the country approached its fifth winter under bombardment. At least four people were killed and at least eight others injured. Emergency power cuts were imposed in Kyiv and three additional regions following the attack. On Thursday, Russian drones struck near a support structure of the Southern Bridge in Kyiv, the first time drones had targeted one of the capital’s main bridges. CNBC reported the scope of the attacks.
Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been a consistent target since the early months of the war. Russia has hit power plants, substations, and transmission lines repeatedly, forcing emergency repairs during breaks in the bombardment and electricity imports from European neighbors when domestic supply falls short. The strategy’s purpose hasn’t changed: raise the cost of sustaining the war for Ukrainian civilians and apply pressure to the European allies who have helped pay to keep the lights on. Wednesday’s attack came as temperatures in Kyiv started to drop.
October 1 marked the start of a significant change in how the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is financed. States began absorbing a larger share of SNAP’s administrative and operational costs as federal funding for those expenses was reduced under terms that took effect with the new fiscal year. The program currently serves tens of millions of low-income Americans. NBC Washington reported on the shift and its potential effects on states.
SNAP traces to the Food Stamp Act of 1964, part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty legislation. Federal and state governments have shared costs since the program’s origin, but the formula dividing those costs has been revised multiple times over the decades. This week’s change is the latest in that pattern. States that absorb the additional expense will continue providing benefits at current levels. States that can’t or won’t will look for other ways to adjust, and those adjustments will show up in participation data over the next several months. The practical consequences will arrive quietly, one case at a time, in ways that don’t make front pages.
The World Health Organization released updated global health estimates Friday showing that global life expectancy reached 73.3 years in 2023, just 0.1 years below the 73.4 years recorded in 2019 before the pandemic. Recovery, but not quite full recovery. The WHO published the full dataset Friday.
Healthy life expectancy, meaning years lived in good health rather than total years alive, recovered more slowly. It stood at 62.8 years in 2023, still 0.4 years below its 2019 level. The larger finding in the data is structural: noncommunicable diseases, including diabetes, dementia, and mental health conditions, accounted for 74 percent of all deaths worldwide in 2023. In 2000, that figure was 58 percent. Infectious disease deaths have fallen significantly over twenty-three years. The diseases that come with longer lives have grown to fill the space. That gap between total years and healthy years is the territory where a lot of the most important planning decisions happen. Glenn Suttner’s piece on the long-term care conversation most families delay too long is in the Money section.
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI appointed Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri as the country’s first female prime minister Tuesday, following her party’s win in parliamentary elections. El Mansouri is fifty years old. She’s an attorney, the former mayor of Marrakesh, and a former minister of housing and urban planning. She’s the third woman to serve as prime minister in the Arab world, after Tunisia’s Najla Bouden and Sarra Zaafrani Zenzri. Al Jazeera reported the appointment and her background.
She was tasked with forming a new government. The challenges on her list include youth unemployment, rising costs of living, and co-hosting the 2030 FIFA World Cup. None of those are small. But for a country where this particular door had never been opened, Tuesday’s appointment is what the record shows for the week. It’ll be a while before anyone knows what she does with it. That’s what makes it worth watching.
Howard Fenn writes The Day, Monday through Friday.
