| Happy Friday and welcome back to On The Money. I'm Sylvan Lane, and here's your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line. See something I missed? Let me know at slane@thehill.com or tweet me @SylvanLane. And if you like your newsletter, you can subscribe to it here: http://bit.ly/1NxxW2N. Write us with tips, suggestions and news: slane@thehill.com, vneedham@thehill.com, njagoda@thehill.com and nelis@thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @SylvanLane, @VickofTheHill, @NJagoda and @NivElis. 
THE BIG DEAL--Unemployment hits 49-year low, economy adds 134K jobs in September: The U.S. economy added 134,000 jobs in September as the labor market still shows strength heading into the fall. The figure, though, was below expectations.
The unemployment rate also fell to 3.7 percent for the lowest level since December 1969, the Labor Department reported on Friday. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, said after a private survey found that businesses added 230,000 jobs last month, that at the current pace of job creation, unemployment will fall into the low 3 percent's by this time next year. Estimates had been for about 184,000 jobs in September, but there were 87,000 more jobs in July and August than initially reported. The Hill's Vicki Needham breaks down the data here. In a nutshell: Jason Furman, the former head of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, said on Twitter that the drop in unemployment along with upward revisions in jobs growth in July and August is "enough to make you ignore the 134K headline jobs number" and "you would be mostly right in doing that."
LEADING THE DAY Legal obstacles to pursuing tax charges against Trump family: New York officials are looking for ways to go after President Trump following a blockbuster story detailing his family's tax practices. But experts say any efforts by federal and state authorities to impose penalties on the president would face serious legal and practical obstacles. The New York Times on Tuesday published an investigative report, based on a review of more than 100,000 pages of documents, describing "dubious" tax schemes that the president and his family engaged in during the 1990s so that his parents could avoid gift and estate taxes. The article prompted calls for government probes. Tax lawyers, however, say an investigation would be challenging, particularly because the practices cited in the Times article occurred years, even decades ago. The Hill's Naomi Jagoda tells us why here. Trump tax story prompts calls to revise estate rules: Democrats are calling for changes to the estate tax following a bombshell news report detailing how the Trump family navigated the tax code to protect the family's financial assets. "The whole tax code is riddled with giveaways to folks at the top," said Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. "What I think everybody has seen, certainly, in the article, is that the president's family was looking at using every dodge in sight, and people need to understand when the folks at the top use those dodges, that ripples all the way to the tax bills of the middle class." Democrats, who are favored in November to take control of the House but have a much smaller chance of winning the Senate, say the Trump family's story is emblematic of wider problems in the tax code. The Hill's Niv Elis explains here.
NEXT WEEK'S NEWS, NOW - The Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing Thursday on cryptocurrency and the blockchain ecosystem.
GOOD TO KNOW
ODDS AND ENDS - A top Facebook executive's show of support for Brett Kavanaugh has caused a rift within the company, angering employees and forcing its leaders to put some distance between Facebook and its own head of public policy, according to a New York Times report.
RECAP THE WEEK WITH ON THE MONEY |
