The unemployment rate held steady at 3.7%, the Labor Department said Friday. Average hourly wages rose 18 cents to $32.82, pushing the annual increase to 5.1% from 4.7% the previous month. Leisure and hospitality, the industry hit hardest by the pandemic, led the job gains with 88,000, mostly in restaurants and bars. Employment in the sector is still nearly 1 million below its pre-COVID level, though U.S. payrolls overall recovered all 22 million jobs lost in the crisis in August. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.9% as of 9:44 a.m. EST, the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 were both down by more than 1%. . . .
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