Friday’s report capped a week of mostly encouraging data on the job market, including an update indicating layoffs remain relatively low. Such strength helps allay one of Wall Street’s top questions: whether the job market will continue to hold up after the Federal Reserve earlier kept interest rates at a two-decade high.

The US added 254,000 jobs in September, more than the forecast of 147,000. In September, the US unemployment rate dropped for the second straight month. Unemployment was expected to hold steady at August's 4.