Employers added 29,000 jobs in September, far fewer than forecast, and unemployment rose to 4.2%.
The Labor Department reported the figure on Friday, Oct. 2; forecasters had expected 84,000. Revisions cut 60,000 jobs from July and August, turning July into a 10,000-job loss. This is the last jobs report before the Nov. 3 midterms.
Since 1990, a 12-month gain as small as July’s 316,000 has come only during or right after the 2008 and 2020 recessions.
October 3, 2026 · Seven stories, illustrated
The three industries are the moves the reporting names, drawn separately; they do not add up to 29,000. The reporting gives no revised August figure, so August has no bar.
- Unemployment
- 4.2% up from 4.1% in August
- Average hourly pay
- $37.81 up 3% in a year, below August’s 3.4% inflation rate. Pay adjusted for inflation has fallen year over year for five straight months, per BLS.
- The past year
- 45,000 a month, BLS’s average payroll gain over the past 12 months. Tech employment is down 69,000 over the year, per Joseph Politano.
- First-time jobless claims
- 197,000 in the week ended Sept. 26, per Bloomberg
They expect to “make so much money.”Kevin Hassett, the National Economic Council director, crediting the 485,000 people who joined the labor force
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The U.S. turned down Saudi requests for airstrikes on the Houthis and sent targeting data for a Saudi offensive instead.
Saudi and Yemeni government forces plan to push the Houthis off the Red Sea coast near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait within days. It is the second time in recent weeks Washington has said no to Saudi requests for U.S. strikes, according to U.S. officials who spoke to Axios.
The strait is the Red Sea’s southern mouth, between Yemen and Djibouti. The U.S. military gave the Saudis more than 200 Houthi targets in the past two weeks; none of them are drawn here.
The map shows where the countries and the strait are, not front lines, targets or positions. Natural Earth coastlines; the strait is marked at its Wikidata coordinate.
The U.S. “is not going to take kinetic action for now.”A U.S. official
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Trump would not rule out invoking the Insurrection Act or declaring a national emergency around the Nov. 3 elections.
He said so in a Sept. 28 Oval Office interview with TIME, published Thursday. The Insurrection Act lets a president use the military or federalize the National Guard to put down what he deems an insurrection.
“No plans”
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, in a letter to Sen. Elissa Slotkin, on sending federal troops or federalized Guard to polling places
“I’m not committing to anything. We’re going to see how it plays out in court.”
Trump, in an Oval Office interview with TIME published Thursday, as The Hill reported
The elections
Around which Trump would not rule out the Insurrection Act or a national emergency
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Christa Pike is unconscious on a ventilator after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her, her lawyers say.
Her lawyers have moved to preserve evidence. Tennessee Republican lawmakers want to review the state’s single-drug lethal injection method.
- Sept. 30, evening
The Supreme Court lifted a 2-1 6th Circuit stay issued about an hour before the execution, with the three liberal justices dissenting.
- about an hour
spent by the execution team on the attempt. By her attorney’s count, they used at least seven needles on her left arm.
- two pentobarbital doses
which Pike, 50, survived. Her lawyers allege misplaced IV lines sent the drug into her tissue instead of her bloodstream.
- Now
Unconscious on a ventilator, her lawyers say. Tennessee canceled its last execution of 2026.
It is Tennessee’s second failed execution this year, after Tony Carruthers in May (The Hill). The Death Penalty Information Center counts 64 botched U.S. executions since 1982, 51 of them lethal injections.
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A federal judge ruled that a deputy’s warrantless Flock license-plate search was unconstitutional.
A deputy had searched a driver’s California plate without a warrant or probable cause. U.S. District Judge Sara Hill in Oklahoma called Flock’s plate-reader network “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance.”
One search the deputy’s search of a driver’s California plate, the one the court ruled on. At scale it would be a thousandth of one square; it is drawn far larger so it can be seen.
more than 100,000 a month warrantless Flock searches by police, per audit logs reviewed by 404 Media. Each square is 1,000.
“More than 100,000” is a lower bound, so the true field is larger. The ruling binds no other court.
The Washington Post also reported the ruling on Oct. 2.
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The Supreme Court opens its term Oct. 5 with 30 cases, after ruling against Trump on tariffs, birthright citizenship and mail-in voting.
The Court also ruled against him on a Fed firing. Trump told Time: “I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often.”
cases the Court has taken so far, covering climate liability, guns, immigration and religious liberty
- Tariffs
- Birthright citizenship
- Mail-in voting
- A Fed firing
The reporting gives no date for the Fed ruling. His administration has still won many rulings on the emergency docket.
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Ten House Blue Dog Democrats endorsed the Senate’s permitting bill as environmental groups organize to kill it.
The bill would speed federal approval of power lines, pipelines and other energy projects. It cuts the window to sue over a project to 150 days from up to six years now, and lets FERC, the federal grid regulator, approve a power line a state has stalled on for a year.
“To stop this bill, not to make it better.”An organizer on the opponents’ call, from a transcript Punchbowl News reporter Josh Siegel obtained
“Congress must clear the logjam and move permitting reform forward, not punt the issue to a future Congress,” the Blue Dog Coalition wrote. Opponents call the bill a giveaway to data centers. Permitting advocate Thomas Hochman says the opposite: “This bill would enact far stricter, costlier rules for data centers in particular.” Utility critic David Pomerantz says it means “more grid investment” but “structurally less control for the monopoly utilities.”
- 2005
Congress let FERC override states that stall on power lines; a federal appeals court gutted that power in 2009, and FERC has never used it.
- 2022
Joe Manchin’s permitting deal was stripped from a September funding bill after it could not reach 60 votes.
- 2024
The Barrasso-Manchin bill cleared committee 15-4 and died with no floor vote.
- 2026
The 417-page bill introduced Sept. 30 needs 60 Senate votes. No vote will come before the Nov. 3 midterms.