Portland Mortgage Market Update — September 4, 2026

It was Jobs week! The week opened with the Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLTS) report, followed by ADP's report and culminating with todays BLS jobs report. Starting at the beginning of the week, the JOLTS report came in a bit lighter than expected. The market was expecting 7.3 Million openings, but it barely missed that coming in at 7.27M. Also, the Quits rate fell to 1.9%, which is tied with the lowest level since 2014 (excluding COVID). This shows that more people are holding on to their jobs, and not voluntarily quitting/being aggressively poached by other companies. Some critics are saying this report is worse than advertised because since COVID and the advent of working from home, companies can advertise the same job openings across every state, so the actual number of true job openings could be much worse. The ADP report added fuel to that fire, saying only 38K jobs were created in August, well below the 53K estimated. Education and Health Services buoyed that number, contributing 45K new jobs, all other sectors lost 7,000 jobs in the month. Revelio Labs, a relative newcomer to the Labor Statistics field but one that has established quite a solid reputation supported ADP's numbers showing 37K new jobs created.

Despite these weaker reports, Fed members continually pointed to a strong labor market as a reason to hike rates. At the beginning of the week, Fed Governor Michael Barr said he believed the Fed should hike at the September 16 meeting if we don't see an improved CPI report. The market took that as similar to what Fed Chair Warsh said in Jackson Hole last week. NY Fed President John Williams then claimed he believed the labor market was solid, further stoking fears of a Fed rate hike (although he also said he liked where the rate is now). It wasn't until yesterday that Fed Governor Christopher Waller spoke with some semblance of reason. He said he still sees upside risks to inflation, but energy prices and tariffs are short term issues and do not threaten long term inflation expectations. He said he believes that underlying inflation is actually doing better than what the numbers would suggest (something I have been arguing for months), and that while the low unemployment rate is keeping the labor market in satisfactory condition, but we continue to see a weak level in jobs created.

The stage was set for today's BLS Jobs report. With a week full of weaker reports, a weaker BLS report would be a boon for interest rates. And in true BLS fashion, it bucked the trend and came in way hotter than expected showing 162K new jobs created vs the estimated 58K. The BLS report includes government positions, so to compare apples to apples with the other reports we have to strip those out which leaves a +127 vs ADPs +38K and Revelio's +37K. Of those 127K, the BLS claims 74K were created from their birth/death model which is more or less an educated guess on small business creation (ADP showed 0 job grown in small businesses). Bottom line, I hate the BLS Report. Expect this report to be revised downward in coming months, and again when the QCEW comes out. Now all eyes will be on next Friday's CPI report; if it comes in lower or at expectations we might be able to squint and look at possible rate cuts down the road.