“If you average job growth by quarter, it has been slowing over the year,” said Sonya Ravindranath Waddell, director of regional economics for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

The state showed average monthly job gains of 6,300 in the first quarter of 2017. The second quarter had average monthly gains of 4,100, while the third quarter showed about 1,200 per month.

In the first nine months of 2017, Virginia gained about 3,900 jobs per month, compared with gains of about 2,900 per month in the first nine months of 2016.

Virginia had the 14th-lowest unemployment rate among states in September, along with Maine and Minnesota, Lang said.

Unemployment rates were lower in September in 11 states, higher in four states and unchanged in 35 states, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

“One thing that is certainly on our horizon is the federal government budget talks,” Waddell said. Virginia is the second-largest receiver of federal contracts of any state behind California.

“As a share of the economy, those contract dollars have a larger impact in Virginia,” she said, especially in the professional and business services sector.