U.S. employers created 96,000 new jobs in September, a weaker rate of hiring than economists expected. The U.S. unemployment rate held steady at 5.4%, the Labor Department said.

The report diappointed analysts who’d been expecting 150,000 new jobs.

The four hurricanes that hit the southern U.S. over the past two months appear “to have held down employment growth, but not enough to change materially,” the U.S. Labor Department said Friday.

“In September, modest job gains occurred in a few service-providing industries,” the department said.

The U.S. government also revised August’s job creation figure downward from the initial estimate of 144,000 to 128,000.