Employment grew by 103,000 workers in the month, the Labor Department said. Wall Street had expected a fairly tepid 59,000 increase in nonfarm payrolls for the month, according to a MarketWatch survey.

4th Quarter jobs improvement?

WSJ's Kelly Evans discusses the nation's employment picture, and specifically the prospects for an improvement in the jobs picture September and the 4th quarter.

The gain in September was due in part to the return of about 45,000 workers following a strike against Verizon Communications Inc. VZ +0.39% by unionized workers.

Still, Wall Street greeted the size of the monthly increase, with stock futures moving broadly higher.  Read more in Indications.

Indeed, the data did show some strength below the surface. The payrolls count over the prior two months was revised higher by a cumulative 99,000. Payrolls rose by a revised 57,000 in August and by 127,000 in July.

But the pace of job growth remains well below what’s needed to bring down the unemployment rate, which remained steady at 9.1% in September for the third straight month, according to a separate survey of 60,000 households. This was in line with analyst expectations.

The jobless rate has stayed in a tight range near 9% since April 2009.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress this week that the economy was close to faltering and pushed Congress to take steps to tackle the persistently high unemployment.

President Barack Obama has been pushing Congress hard to take up his jobs bill.

Unemployment rose by 25,000 to 14.0 million for September, while employment rose 398,000 to 140 million. The labor force increased by 423,000 and some discouraged workers returned to the labor market.

The participation rate rose to 64.2% in September from 64.0% in the prior month.

An alternate measure of employment, which includes discouraged workers and those forced to work part-time because of the weak economy, rose to 16.5% from 16.2%. This is the highest level since December 2010.
September data details

Among all industries, 55.4% were hiring, down from 55.6% in August.

The only real weakness was in employment in the government sector, which lost 34,000 jobs. Since September 2008, employment in local government has fallen by 535,000.

Also, transportation shed 1,900 jobs on the month.

Payrolls in goods-producing industries rose by 18,000 last month, including 26,000 in construction, the strongest gain in seven months. Nearly all of the gain was in nonresidential building, the Labor Department said.

Manufacturing was soft. The sector shed 13,000 jobs in September.

Manufacturing hours slipped six minutes to 40.2 hours, while overtime in the sector rose six minutes to 3.2 hours.

Private-sector services industries added 85,000 jobs for the month, up from 66,000 in August.

Education and health care added 45,000 jobs.

Financial industries shed 8,000 jobs.

The average workweek rose 6 minutes to 34.3 hours.

Average hourly earnings increased 0.2% in September, reversing a decline of the same size in August. Earnings are up 1.9% on a year-on-year basis, according to the Labor Department.