Traders of short-term U.S. interest-rate futures on Friday pushed bets on the Federal Reserve's first rate hike a bit later into 2014 after a government report showed the U.S. economy added fewer jobs than expected in August.
Fed funds futures prices suggested traders are now betting that the Fed will first raise rates at its October 2014 meeting or later, after the U.S. Labor Department reported 169,000 jobs were added last month.
Economists had expected a rise of 180,000 jobs. The weak report raised questions over whether the Fed will begin to cut its bond-buying stimulus this month, as many economists expected.
(Read more: Jobs growth misses high hopes; unemployment rate drops to 7.3%)
Traders now see just a 46 percent chance of a rate hike in September 2014, down from 53 percent before the report, according to CME Group's Fed Watch, which generates probabilities based on the price of Fed funds futures traded at the Chicago Board of Trade.