Live Updates: The US economy added a whopping 254,000 jobs last month

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell holds a press conference in Washington, DC on September 18.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues at the central bank are well aware that the labor market is weakening.

“In many ways the job market is still solid, but it has actually cooled,” Powell said at an economic conference in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this week. “If you are unemployed now, it will be harder to find a job than it was two years ago when the labor market was extremely tight.”

At the same time, Powell and other Fed officials have said they don't want the job market to weaken any further, which is why most voted last month to cut interest rates by half a percentage point, in contrast to the more typical quarterly numbers. Point cut.

Fed Governor Michelle Bowman, who supported a quarter-point cut at the last meeting, said the unemployment rate, which rose to 4.2% in August from 3.7% at the start of this year, “broadly reflects weaker hiring, as new job seekers enter or…” Those returning to work are taking longer to find work, while the number of layoffs remains low.”

But there's another contributing factor: “A mismatch between the skills of the new workforce and the jobs available,” Bowman said at a banking conference in Charleston, South Carolina, earlier this week. In other words, job seekers can't find jobs because they don't have the skills employers expect from applicants to fill open positions.