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Weekly Recap: Hiring Stalled at 29,000 and the Thirty-Year Mortgage Went Up a Quarter Point Anyway

By Steve Waller · October 4, 2026

Weekly Recap: Hiring Stalled at 29,000 and the Thirty-Year Mortgage Went Up a Quarter Point Anyway

The ten-year Treasury closed the week at 5.28% against 5.17% a week earlier, and Freddie Mac's thirty-year survey jumped 25 basis points to 7.28% - up from 6.34% a year ago. September payrolls came in at 29,000 with July revised to a loss of 10,000, and the long end rose anyway, because ISM's manufacturing prices index went to 77.9% and August PCE printed 3.4%. On HAR's $330,000 Houston median that quarter point takes $8,148 of house away from your exit buyer at an unchanged payment.

The week in one sentence

Hiring stalled, input costs jumped, and the bond market priced the costs.

Here is the ten-year Treasury session by session from the Treasury's own daily par yield curve: 5.24% Monday, 5.26% Tuesday, 5.29% Wednesday, 5.24% Thursday, 5.28% Friday. It closed the previous Friday at 5.17% and it began September at 4.79%. Wednesday's 5.29% is the highest daily print in the series since 2007. The thirty-year Treasury finished at 5.63% against 5.49% a week earlier, and the two-year went from 4.81% to 4.83% - two basis points at the short end against eleven at the ten-year and fourteen at the thirty. The gap between the two-year and the ten-year widened from 36 basis points to 45.

That shape matters more than the level. A curve that steepens while the short end sits still is not a market repricing the Fed. It is a market repricing inflation and the supply of Treasury paper - and the part it is repricing is exactly the part that sets your exit buyer's mortgage and your DSCR takeout.

Friday's jobs number should have pulled rates down. It did not.

BLS reported September nonfarm payrolls at +29,000 with unemployment at 4.2%. The revisions were worse than the headline: July went from +21,000 to -10,000, a downward revision of 31,000, and August went from +162,000 to +133,000. Average hourly earnings rose five cents, 0.1%, to $37.81. Construction payrolls added 11,000.

In a normal week a 29,000 print with a negative revision behind it takes the ten-year down several basis points. Instead it closed Friday four basis points higher than Thursday. The reason had arrived the day before.

Two inflation prints, and one of them was ugly

Wednesday, BEA's August personal income release put the PCE price index at +0.3% on the month and 3.4% over twelve months, core at +0.2% and 3.0%. Real spending rose 0.6%, which is a consumer who has not stopped.

Thursday was the one that moved paper. ISM's September manufacturing report held the headline PMI almost flat at 54.5% from 54.6%, but its Prices Index went to 77.9% from 71.1% - a 6.8 point jump, with 58.6% of respondents reporting higher prices against 46.2% in August. ISM named three drivers: steel and aluminum moving through the entire value chain, tariffs on imported goods, and petroleum-based products on the Middle East conflict. New orders rose to 55.3% and employment to 52.7%.

An economy that is not hiring, is still spending, and is paying more for everything it buys is the one combination that leaves the long end nowhere to go but up.

What 7.28% costs the buyer you are selling to

Freddie Mac's survey printed Thursday at 7.28% on the thirty-year, up 25 basis points from 7.03%, with the fifteen-year at 6.60% from 6.42%. A year ago the same survey read 6.34%.

The arithmetic on HAR's August Houston median of $330,000, twenty percent down, thirty-year amortising:

If you are underwriting an exit at today's median, the question is not whether the house sells. It is whether the buyer who can afford it at 7.28% is still shopping in the price band you comped into.

ATTOM put a number on the Houston flip, and it is 3.7%

Thursday's Q2 2026 flipping report, covered in Friday's brief, is worth restating in the week's context. Nationally the typical flip grossed 21.5% over its purchase price on a typical gross profit of $60,526, with flips running 6.2% of all sales. In Houston the typical flip grossed 3.7%. Austin was 2.8%, Dallas 1.8%, and San Antonio lost 0.3%.

A 3.7% gross spread on a $330,000 exit is $12,210. Selling costs at seven percent of that sale are $23,100, before a dollar of rehab, interest or holding cost. That is the market's average outcome, not its floor, and it is why the purchase price is the only line in the deal that forgives nothing: ARV times 70 to 75 percent, less repairs, less closing costs. Whatever you did not take off the purchase price, you are paying for out of a $12,210 spread.

The rental side did not move at all

HAR's August rental update has Houston's average single-family rent at $2,412 against $2,414 a year earlier - down two dollars in twelve months - on lease volume up 4.7% to 4,805 leases. Townhome and condo rent averaged $2,014, up 2.4%.

So the income side of a rental is flat and the cost of the debt against it is not. On a $262,500 takeout loan, this week's eleven basis points add $19.63 a month. The forty-nine basis points since 1 September add $88.06 a month, or $1,057 a year. Rent has given you nothing to absorb either with. Any buy-and-hold pencilled on a September curve needs re-running before it closes.

What held still: costs, permits, insurance

No fresh data on any of the three this week, which is itself worth knowing when you are deciding what to trust in an underwrite.

Private residential construction spending rose 1.1% in August, the one piece of builder data that moved in the right direction this week.

The week ahead

A light calendar for releases and a heavy one for the long end. Two coupon auctions land in the same week the ten-year made a nineteen-year high.

The thing to watch is Wednesday and Thursday. A soft ten-year or thirty-year auction at these levels pushes the thirty-year mortgage through 7.28%, and the September minutes land between the two.

How to work this week

Sources

Market data is from public sources and is provided for information only. Nothing here is an offer of credit, a rate quote, or investment advice. Financing is subject to underwriting, lender approval, appraisal or valuation, title, insurance, property eligibility and program availability.

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