Nov 1 Reuters Any doubts the Federal Reserve will go ahead with an interestrate cut next week fell away on Friday after a government report showed U.S. employers added fewer workers in October than in any month since December 2020.

The 12,000 increase in nonfarm payrolls last month was far short of the 113,000 economists had anticipated even after they tried to account for tens of thousands of workers kept off the job by a Boeing strike and the impact of two large hurricanes in the Southeast.

The unemployment rate, however, remained at 4.1, in what some analysts took as an indication that the labor market remains strong and much of the unexpected weakness in payrolls will be reversed when the strike is resolved and as hurricane damage is repaired.

Some 512,000 people reported they were unable to work due to bad weather, the most for any October since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking that figure in 1976.

The nonfarm payrolls may not be great on its face, but this recent drop should be a temporary miss as rebuilding and activity pick up after the hurricanes and with the likelihood of the Boeing strike ending, said Byron Anderson, head of fixed income at Laffer Tengler Investments.

Traders of futures that settle to the Fed39;s policy rate were pricing about a 99 chance of a quarterpoint interestrate cut on Nov. 7, to 4.54.75, compared with 92 earlier. But notably, ratefutures prices reflected no chance the Fed would deliver another halfpoint interestrate…