As a result, analysts predicted, the economy is expected to advance at roughly a 2 percent annualized pace for the fourth quarter and about 1.5 percent for the full year, or about 1 percentage point lower than might have been achieved without those fiscal hurdles to overcome.

The pace of employment growth in September was slower than the average rate over the previous year, which was 185,000 jobs a month. The unemployment rate fell to 7.2, from 7.3 percent the previous month, a change that was not statistically significant. The unemployment rate has fallen by 0.4 percentage point since June, though much of the improvement was because many people have dropped out of the labor force and are no longer counted.

Other details of the report were lackluster. The length of the average workweek and the share of Americans actively engaged in the labor force both remained flat. Before August, the share of Americans in the labor force had not been this low since 1978, when women were less likely to be working. Economists have been expecting that this so-called labor force participation rate would pick up as workers waiting on the sidelines saw improvements in the job market and started applying for work again, but that has not yet happened.

The biggest net hiring gains in September were in construction, wholesale trade, and transportation and warehousing.

Many economists said they expected the Fed to postpone into next year any move to scale back its major asset purchases, known as quantitative easing, because that action has been predicated on a steadily improving economy. “In light of the moderate tone of the September employment report, we have pushed out our expectation for the first Fed tapering in the pace of asset purchases to March 2014 from December 2013,” economists at Barclays wrote in a note to clients.

It will be months before economists get a report of the jobs market that is untainted by the recent fiscal crisis. If the weak September job growth and October furloughs do not persuade Fed policy makers to delay tapering, complications with incoming economic data caused by the shutdown are expected to.