The US labor market added far fewer jobs than expected in October in a report that was disrupted by weather and worker strikes yet was nonetheless immediately seized upon as a campaign trail issue for the final days of the 2024 election season.
While the White House and Kamala Harris allies focused on the “noisy” nature of the report, the Trump campaign touted the low numbers while also continuing to lob evidence-free charges that they were manipulated.
“You know these numbers were cooked just like all the other Harris-Biden numbers,” posted Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller six minutes after the number was released even as he also called the number itself a “disaster” for the Harris campaign.
Friday’s data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the labor market adding just 12,000 payrolls in October, far below the 100,000 that had been expected by economists. The data also showed the unemployment rate unchanged at 4.1%.
Harris and her allies have been trying to downplay the number all week, with White House officials previously saying they expected a “noisy” number due to Hurricanes Helene and Milton as well as a short port strike and an ongoing labor stoppage at Boeing.
“Outside estimates suggest that strikes and weather-related events could collectively lower the change in the October payroll by as much as 100,000 jobs,” Jared Bernstein, the chair of President Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, said Wednesday at a White House briefing
But the final number still fell well below even the cautious advance estimates, leaving Harris allies scrambling to explain.
“The simplest way to describe it is that this was a shortened reporting period because we’re here talking about this on the first of the month,” acting US Labor Secretary Julie Su told Yahoo Finance Friday morning, noting that the October data is even more focused on the first half of the month when the disruptions were most pronounced.
“I expect we’ll be coming back here next month talking about the resilience and the strength of this labor market,” she added.
Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris gives a thumbs down during a presidential debate with former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Philadelphia on September 10. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images) ·SAUL LOEB via Getty Images
One consolation for the Harris campaign is that Friday’s number still showed job growth and confirmed that the economy has now gained jobs every single month Biden has been in office so far.
Indeed, many economic observers tended to dismiss the numbers and suggest it wouldn’t derail underlying trends.
“We’re in a pretty good place right now in the economy,” RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas told Yahoo Finance immediately after the number was released. “This particular set of data is not going to derail that, nor will it derail our financial markets.”
Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, added online that the number was a “head fake” and said “it is fair to say the job market remains rock-solid.”
For Trump’s campaign, the numbers were both a cause for celebration and another opportunity to put forth baseless claims that the officials at the Bureau of Labor Statistics are altering their survey results to benefit the Harris campaign.
Earlier this week, former President Trump even directly claimed Tuesday at a press conference that “it’s like a fake economy” as he continued his longtime strategy of taking personal credit for good economic data but calling other inconvenient points false.
“I know for a fact they’re not adding all of the numbers,” he said.
Right-wing skepticism of job numbers in particular has been heightened following a routine August revision that revealed the US economy employed 818,000 fewer people than originally reported.
It still showed the Biden/Harris administration has overseen job growth, but Trump and his allies seized upon the revelation that the increase was less than known previously.
Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Nevada on October 31. (IAN MAULE/AFP via Getty Images) ·IAN MAULE via Getty Images
On Friday, Trump and his allies appeared to try and have it both ways, with some mentioning the baseless fraud charges but many others simply taking the challenging numbers for Harris at face value and trying to keep the focus there.
“This jobs report is a catastrophe and definitively reveals how badly Kamala Harris broke our economy,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
“The estimate was 120K for October, so this number (12K) is devastatingly bad,” added Trump senior adviser Tim Murtaugh in his own reaction.
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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