U.S. Added Just 12,000 Jobs In October As Hurricanes And Labor Strike Impact Final Report Before Election; Unemployment Rate Stays At 4.1%

The final jobs report before the 2024 presidential election showed a muddled picture, with job gains dropping significantly in October amid the disruption from major hurricanes and a Boeing labor strike.

Just 12,000 jobs were added to payrolls, which is below expectations and a drop from the 223,000 added the previous month. The unemployment rate remained essentially unchanged at 4.1%.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which gathers the data, cautioned that the weather disasters had an impact on its survey collection.

After a period of job losses, employment in movies and sound recordings rose by 2,600 to 448,000. Employment in broadcasting and among content providers dropped by 3,300 to 333,000. Publishing Jobs increased by 3,900 to 926,700.

The report follows more optimistic data earlier this week, including average 2.8% growth in the GDP this year and a continued decline in the inflation rate.

The most significant jobs gains were in health care and government. The biggest declines were within temporary help for business and professional services, while manufacturing fell by 46,000. The BLS noted that there was a 44,000 drop in transportation equipment manufacturing “largely due to strike activity.”

Justin Wolfers, professor at the University of Michigan, wrote on X, “As a guess, hurricanes cost about -40k jobs, and the Boeing strike also cost -40k jobs. So *underlying* jobs growth was slower but still reasonable.”

Average hourly earnings rose by 13 cents during the month to $35.46, a rise of 0.4%, or 4% over the past 12 months.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics, called the figures a “head fake” because they were “weighed down by the temporary impact of the hurricanes and the Boeing strike.”

“Response rates to the survey of businesses used to construct the job estimate were also extraordinarily low due to a very short collection period for the responses,” he wrote on X. “Abstracting from these one-offs, employment increased by close to 150k, about the same as the gains in recent months. This, combined with the stable and low near 4% unemployment rate and sturdy wage growth of 4%, it is fair to say the job market remains rock-solid.”