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Wall Street drew two conclusions from the news that the US jobs engine shifted down into a lower gear last month. The first – that a September increase in interest rates is now a non-starter – was almost certainly right.  Putting up the cost of borrowing so close to the presidential election in early November always looked like an outside bet. It would have taken thunderously good figures for job creation to have persuaded the more dove-ish policymakers at the Federal Reserve to move, and the ones released on Friday were average at best.  To be sure, the August non-farm payrolls have come in worse than expected for the past decade, suggesting that there might be some problem with the way the raw data is seasonally adjusted. What’s more, the two previous months – June and July – saw strong increases in demand for labour, so the three-month average for non-farm payrolls is running at a healthy 200,000. That could persuade some of the hawks at the Fed to move, but they will not be able to muster a majority. The second conclusion drawn by Wall Street is more questionable. That is the assumption that the rate rise some analysts had pencilled in for September has now simply been put back to a later date. Some economists believe the Fed won’t waste any time once US voters have chosen who will be Barack Obama’s successor at the White House; some think the central bank will wait until March next year. There is, though, a different way of looking at the numbers. For most of this year, the strength of the US labour market has been at odds with data showing the economy growing only slowly. Sooner or later, the theory went, growth would accelerate and come into line with employment numbers, so justifying higher interest rates.