The Chicago Business Barometer™ which reflects the health of the manufacturing and service sectors in the Chicago area, rose for the second straight month to 46.6 in September from 46.1 the previous month. Also known as the Chicago PMI, a reading above 50 is indicative of expansion in the business sector, while a reading below 50 suggests contraction. For the last four months, the barometer's readings have been within the range of 45.3 to 47.4. For 24 of the last 25 months, the barometer has registered contraction. While order backlogs (+5.3) points and employment (+5.0) points improved considerably, contributing to the small increase; reductions in both production and in new orders (-1.1) points each, and supplier deliveries (-4.9) points partially offset the increases.

The US Energy Information Administration reported that US commercial crude oil inventories increased by 3.9 million barrels to 416.9M barrels (4% below the five-year average) for the week ending September 27th; this follows a 4.5M barrel drop the previous week. Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 1.1M barrels (1% below the five-year average) to 221.2M. Distillate inventories decreased by 1.3M barrels (8% below the five-year average) to 121.6M. Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 0.9M barrels. Refineries operated at 87.46% of their operable capacity, down from 90.9%. Crude oil imports came in at 6.6M bpd, an increase of 171K bpd as compared to the previous week. Total motor gasoline imports averaged 540K bpd, and distillate fuel imports averaged 194K bpd.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an increase of 254,000 jobs in September, while the unemployment rate decreased by 0.1 percentage points to 4.1%. The number of unemployed declined to 6.8 million from 7.1 million. A year earlier, the unemployment rate was 3.8%, and the number of unemployed was 6.3M. Job gains occurred in food services and drinking places (+69,000), health care (+45,000), government (+31,000), social assistance (+27,000), and construction (+25,000). Among the unemployed, the number of permanent job losers had little change with 1.7M. The labor force participation remained at 62.7% for the third consecutive month. Average hourly earnings grew 0.4%. At $35.36, average hourly earnings are up 4.0% from a year ago. Revisions to the July and August figures showed that 72,000 more jobs were added than were initially reported.