Why economists think job recovery is slowing

September's jobs report spells bad news for the future of employment recovery, economists say.

Labor Department numbers released Friday show the U.S. regained 660,000 jobs in September, dropping the unemployment rate below 8 percent for the first time in months. Still, those numbers were below economists' expectations, and continued a trend of job growth shrinking for the past four months.

Jason Furman, a Harvard University professor who led former President Barack Obama's economic council, listed three simple reasons for why economic recovery was slowing: People on temporary layoffs have already returned to work, Congress' coronavirus recovery act expired, and the virus is still rapidly spreading across much of the U.S.

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Julia Coronado, a professor at The University of Texas at Austin, predicted October's job growth would be even worse. Paycheck Protection Program loans will soon run out, especially if Congress doesn't pass another relief bill. Service sector hiring is slowing back down, while airlines and other major companies have announced new rounds of major layoffs.

Friday's numbers also revealed job recovery is going especially slowly for non-white Americans, young Americans, and low-wage Americans as a whole. Jared Bernstein, an adviser to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, added in a tweet that "not engaging in aggressive relief/stimulus in the face of this development is policy malpractice," especially for those "vulnerable groups."