The Labor Department will deliver an overdue snapshot of the U.S. job market on Thursday. It's almost seven weeks behind schedule. And because the government shutdown delayed data-gathering, there won't be another one until mid-December.

While the information in the report is a bit stale, covering the month of September, it may offer some clues about the pace of hiring and firing this fall.

It comes after a sluggish summer of job growth, when employers added fewer than 30,000 jobs a month, on average. But if employers weren't adding a lot of new workers, they weren't handing out a lot of pink slips, either.

Federal Reserve governor Chris Waller worries that's about to change. Waller says his conversations with business leaders show the job market is close to stalling.

"Four to six week

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