The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday will release the September nonfarm payrolls number, ending a shutdown-induced blackout on official jobs data, albeit with a decidedly rear-window view.

Due at 8:30 a.m. ET, the release is forecast to show a gain of 50,000 jobs in the public and private sectors, up from the initially reported 22,000 in August but still indicative of a soft labor market.

Though the report will be backward-looking, it at least will provide some fodder for investors, economists and Federal Reserve officials who have had to rely on a host of private alternative data during the record-long shutdown in Washington, D.C. It will be the first BLS jobs report since the August release on Sept. 5. (CNBC – Continue Reading)

Bond traders are bracing for the UK government to raise more funds through gilt sales than previously announced, upping the pressure on Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves as she seeks to deliver a budget next week that puts the country’s debt on a sustainable path.

The government will issue £9 billion ($11.8 billion) more in gilts this fiscal year than announced by the Debt Management Office in April, according to the median estimate of 14 primary dealers surveyed by Bloomberg. That would lift sales for the year to £308.1 billion, the highest level since 2021, when pandemic relief programs forced a sharp increase in borrowing. Estimates collected by Bloomberg ranged from £299.1 billion to £315 billion. (Bloomberg – Continue Reading)

Today, IBM and Cisco announced an intention to collaborate on the groundwork for networked distributed quantum computing, to be realized as soon as the early 2030s. By combining IBM’s leadership in building useful quantum computers with Cisco’s quantum networking innovations, the companies plan to explore how to scale large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers beyond IBM’s ambitious roadmap. Additionally, they will work to solve fundamental challenges towards a quantum computing internet.

Within five years, IBM and Cisco will aim to demonstrate the first proof-of-concept for a network that combines individual, large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers, enabling them to work together to run computations over tens to hundreds of thousands of qubits. This network would allow problems to be run with potentially trillions of quantum gates, the fundamental entangling operations required for transformative quantum applications such as massive optimization problems, or the design of complex materials and medicines. (IBM – Continue Reading)