On September 18 (UTC+8), gold prices recovered some of their earlier losses but remained in negative territory. New data from the U.S. showed a sharp drop in initial jobless claims last week, but more comprehensive data suggest the U.S. labor market is weakening overall. Over the past three months, the U.S. economy has added fewer than 30,000 jobs per month on average, well below the growth of more than 100,000 jobs per month earlier this year. Although the Federal Reserve has implemented interest rate cuts and signaled "further easing to follow," gold prices fell more than 1% earlier in the session as investors viewed its policy outlook as "not as dovish as previously expected." [Jin10]