The October jobs report was a dud, with hurricanes and the Boeing (BA) strike dampening hiring. Employers created just 12,000 jobs for the month, way below the average of 194,000 for the prior 12 months.
But employment will almost certainly rebound in the November count. Beyond that, the weak October number still continues a remarkable string of job gains under President Biden, just days before voters will pass judgment on the economic record Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, have racked up.
Job growth has been positive every single month since Biden took office in January 2021. Donald Trump didn’t accomplish that during his one presidential term, from 2017 to 2021. Barack Obama did preside over an unbroken string of monthly job growth during his second term, from 2013 to 2017. But that was part of the wan recovery from the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, a rebound many Americans found painfully slow.
Before that, no president enjoyed a perfect record on monthly job growth, going back to 1939. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton each came close in their second terms, reflecting the booming economies of the mid-1980s and late 1990s. But Reagan had one spoiler month when employment declined, while Clinton had three.
Biden still has three more months in office, so his perfect record isn’t complete. But there’s no reason to expect a late-game miss. The economy is growing, consumers are spending, and Federal Reserve interest rate cuts now provide a modest tailwind.
More important than Biden’s standing in the history books is the credit voters give Biden, and by extension Harris, for prosperity in real time. And it’s pretty obvious ordinary Americans are unimpressed.
Biden’s approval rating is a dismal 39%, more or less where it has been for the last two years. Biden’s approval sank as inflation crept up to its 9% peak in 2022. Inflation got a lot better, but Biden’s approval ratings didn’t. The year-over-year rate of price hikes is now just 2.4%. Biden has gotten no benefit from that.
Harris’s approval rating matters more, of course, since she replaced Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate over the summer. Voters like Harris better than Biden. Her approval rating is around 48%. An incumbent running for reelection would prefer an approval rating above 50%, but Harris is in the ballpark.
Voters also view Harris differently than Biden on the economy, which is the top election issue, as usual. Luckily for Harris, voters rate her higher than Biden on the economy, suggesting they don’t blame Harris for the top economic problem of the last three years, inflation. Yet there’s also not much evidence voters give either Biden or Harris credit for the record job growth of the post-COVID years.
