U.S. job growth slowed sharply in September likely as Hurricane Florence depressed restaurant and retail payrolls, but the unemployment rate fell to near a 49-year low of 3.7 percent, pointing to a further tightening in labor market conditions.

The U.S. Labor Department’s closely watched monthly employment report Friday also showed a steady rise in wages, suggesting moderate inflation pressures, which could ease concerns about the economy overheating and keep the Federal Reserve on a path of gradual interest rate increases.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 134,000 jobs last month, the fewest in a year, as the retail and leisure and hospitality sectors shed employment. Data for July and August were revised to show 87,000 more jobs added than previously reported.

The economy needs to create roughly 120,000 jobs per month to keep up with growth in the working-age population.

“The weaker gain in payrolls in September may partly reflect some hit from Hurricane Florence,” said Michael Pearce, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics in New York. “There is little in this report to stop the Fed continuing to raise interest rates gradually.”

Economists had forecast payrolls increasing by 185,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate falling one-10th of a percentage point to 3.8 percent.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said last week that the economy’s outlook was “remarkably positive” and he believed it was on the cusp of a “historically rare” era of ultra-low unemployment and tame inflation.

The U.S. central bank raised rates last week for the third time this year and removed the reference in its post-meeting statement to monetary policy remaining “accommodative.”

The Labor Department said it was possible that Hurricane Florence, which lashed South and North Carolina in mid-September, could have affected employment in some industries. It said it was impossible to quantify the net effect on employment.

Payrolls are calculated from a survey of employers, which treats any worker who was not paid for any part of the pay period that includes the 12th of the month as unemployed. The average workweek was unchanged at 34.5 hours in September.

The smaller survey of households from which the jobless rate is derived regards persons as employed regardless of whether they missed work during the reference week and were unpaid as result. It showed 299,000 people reported staying at home last month because of bad weather, compared to an average of 85,000 for a normal September.

The weakness in payrolls last month is not corroborated by other labor market data. An Institute for Supply Management survey published last week showed robust employment gains in the services sector in September.

The drop of two-tenths of a percentage point in the unemployment rate from 3.9 percent in August pushed it to levels last seen in December 1969 and matched the Fed’s forecast of 3.7 percent by the end of this year.

Average hourly earnings increased 0.3 percent in September after a similar rise in August. With September’s increase below the 0.5 percent gain notched during the same period last year, the annual rise in wages fell to 2.8 percent from 2.9 percent in August, which was the biggest advance in more than nine years. (SD-Agencies)