Scott Horsley

The U.S.

trade gap narrowed by almost 11 percent during September.

Exports and imports both increased during the month, but exports jumped more.

New applications for unemployment benefits rose sharply last week after a Thanksgiving lull the week before.

236,000 people applied for jobless aid.

The number of applications can be useful in assessing the pace of layoffs.

Stock in Oracle tumbled after the cloud computing giant reported disappointing earnings.

Oracle's been investing heavily in artificial intelligence.

Despite the dip, co-founder Larry Ellison is still a very wealthy man.

Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

We are going to get a whole lot more information about both inflation and unemployment before the next Fed meeting in January.

And that's something we have been really starved for in the last couple of months.

Because of the government shutdown, we never got those numbers for October.

And the November numbers have been delayed until next week.

So the next time Powell and his colleagues gather, we may have a clearer picture of which way the economy is headed.

There were three dissenting votes, and they came from both sides.

Two members of the committee wanted to hold rates steady, and a third wanted to go with an even bigger half-point rate cut.

Now, that's unusual for a group that usually tries to operate with a lot of consensus.

In fact, it's the first time in six years that there was this much disagreement on a rate vote.

But Powell says, look, that's OK.