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Goolsbee still sees more rate cuts after 'superb' jobs report

The September jobs report was much better than expected. The US added 254,000 jobs in the month and the unemployment rate ticked lower to 4.1%. Expectations had been that 150,00 jobs would be added and the unemployment rate would be 4.2%, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee called the report "superb" but cautioned that people may not want to get too excited about it. "Don't get too worked up about any one month's report. Remember, it's plus or minus 130,000 jobs, just the margin of error. So the last two months when the numbers were disappointing and people began to freak out, I said, let's not overreact to one month's number. This is a very good number. And we got revisions on some of the previous months," he says. He goes on to add that "If we get more jobs reports like this with the unemployment rate hopefully settling in in kind of the low-fours type of range while we're simultaneously getting inflation reads that are right at or even below the 2% target, it would give me ... more comfort that we are achieving exactly where we want to be and was our goal." Goolsbee tells Yahoo Finance Federal Reserve Reporter that Jennifer Schonberger that he agrees with Fed Chair Powell's stance that "there are balanced risks on both sides of the mandate, both inflation and on employment." He notes that the Fed had been focused on fighting inflation, but as its focus shifts, "If GDP growth is coming in as strong as what some of the forecasts are saying, and if the unemployment rate and the jobs numbers keep coming in, like what we saw for this one month, I think we would have a lot of confidence that the growth/recession risks had lessened." On the future path for rate cuts, Goolsbee says "If you look at the SEP dot plot, you see that the broad expanse of the committee believes that the ultimate settling point of rates is well below where we are right now. I don't think that calculus changes," adding that if one were to look ahead to end of 2025 rates are likely "going to be a fair bit lower if conditions continue like this." For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts. This post was written by Stephanie Mikulich.