Another successful Shred-It event is in the books! Thank you to everyone who made the time to stop out to see us. You can check out the pictures from the event by visiting our Facebook page.
A deal has been reached on a short-term debt ceiling increase, which was cheered by Wall Street on Thursday. What was seeming like another potentially down week, turned the corner abruptly. But in typical Capital Hill fashion this is simply another round of kick the can down the road until early December.
Also contributing to the rally this week was the drop in weekly jobless claims. Initial filings for unemployment totaled 326,000, below the expected level of 345,000 and even further below the level from the previous week of 364,000. At the same time, we received the September 2021 jobs report which showed the economy added 194,000 jobs. Although this is the smallest gain since December 2020, the data shows that restaurant and hospitality hiring held steady. There was, however, a decrease of 144,000 in local government employment on a seasonally adjusted basis. Recent reports have noted difficulty in hiring bus drivers, food service workers, and substitute teachers. I recently had the chance to speak to a client who is a school bus driver for the local school system, and he said he was making additional routes because the county was left shorthanded.
Our hope is to continue to see jobless claims continuing to trickle down over the next few months. Covid cases are trending in a different direction this fall versus a year ago. If this trend continues, we’d expect more individuals returning to the workforce as fears of covid dissipate.
The next headline to watch will be third-quarter earnings, which kick off next week. We will be watching closely to see where expectations are set for the remainder of 2021 and beyond.
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Your local Towson Financial Advisors
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/06/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/08/where-the-jobs-are-september-2021-chart.html