▶ ECONOMY

accounted for 105,000 fewer jobs, a sign of the damage to Florida’s tourism industry. Roughly 1.5 million people were unable to work last month because of the weather, the government said, the most in 20 years.

Outside of hurricane-hit areas, many Americans found work. The number of people describing themselves as unemployed fell to 6.8 million, the fewest since March 2007, before the Great Recession began.

That sign of health makes it appear all but certain that the Federal Reserve will raise its benchmark short-term interest rate in December. According to data from the CME Group, investors now foresee a 93 percent chance of a Fed rate hike then.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said she expects pay raises to accelerate as unemployment declines. That, in turn, might lift inflation closer to the Fed’s annual 2 percent target level if companies raised prices to pay for higher salaries.

Hourly workers who couldn’t work because of the storms last month and missed a paycheck would have been counted as not working in the government’s survey of businesses, thereby lowering September’s job total. That’s true even if those employees returned to work after the storm passed or will return.

The unemployment rate fell because it is calculated with a separate survey of households. That survey counted people as employed even if they were temporarily out of work because of the storms. In fact, the proportion of adults who have jobs rose to 60.4 percent, the highest since January 2009.