The US unemployment rate fell to 3.7 percent in September, the lowest rate since December 1969. That’s even lower than the jobless rate during the 1990s internet and productivity boom. Other bits of good news in the report include decent monthly job growth of 134,000 — probably a depressed number because of Hurricane Florence. With upward revisions to the previous two reports, job gains have averaged 190,000 per month over the past three months. Such gains are consistent with “steady declines in the unemployment rate and solid increases in aggregate household income,” according to Barclays. There was also a 0.3 percent gain in average hourly earnings, a tick higher employment rate, and a 420,000 rise in the household measure of employment easily outpaces a 150,000 rise in the labor force.

If I were funnier, I would do a classic Johnny Carson call-and-response, “How hot is it” joke on the job market. “How tight is it? It’s so tight….” So tight that it’s at full employment? Well, that’s the debate. Goldman Sachs, for one, points to a host of factors suggesting the job market is beyond full employment. From GS:

This assessment rests less on the sub-4% unemployment rate—there’s nothing special about round numbers—than on the whole range of indicators that now signal a historically tight labor market, which also includes the underemployment rate U6, job openings, quits, skill shortages, and household job market perceptions. These signals refute the still-widespread belief in large amounts of labor market slack hidden in a depressed participation rate. Just to pick one example, it is all but impossible to reconcile that belief with the fact that the net share of US households—including both labor force participants and nonparticipants—who say that jobs are “plentiful” as opposed to “hard to get” now stands at +23pp, a full 10pp above the peak of the prior cycle in 2007.