Hurricanes’ impact will distort Friday’s jobs report, but there’s no reason to be spooked about the labor market

The broader sweep of economic evidence—including yesterday’s extremely strong reading on gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the third quarter of 2024—tells a clear story: The U.S. economy and labor market is extraordinarily strong relative to any historical benchmark. For example, private-sector job growth and inflation-adjusted wages have grown noticeably faster since the end of 2022 than they had over the full pre-pandemic business cycle (2007–2019) and even since the peak of that expansion (2017–2019). The table at the end of this post highlights several other economic indicators that have performed extraordinarily well over the past two years.

This Friday will see the last significant piece of economic data released before the election—the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release the monthly report on how many jobs were created and what the unemployment rate was in October. The timing of the report will tempt some into exaggerating what it tells us about the U.S. labor market going into next week. We’d remind people of the following when they read through Friday’s data:

• Any monthly jobs report carries limited information about the underlying strength or weakness of the labor market—monthly data are volatile, and new trends should only be taken seriously when they recur for a number of months.
• This Friday’s report is going to be much more volatile and less informative than most because of the hurricanes (Milton and Helene) impacting the U.S. in October when the data were collected, as well as a large number of workers on strike during the October reference week. This will make it entirely unreliable as any signal of the underlying strength of the labor market.
  • The hurricanes will likely significantly depress job growth for the month (most estimates are that it will depress growth by roughly 50,000 jobs but leave open the possibility of a significantly larger effect).
  • These jobs will likely rebound quickly and add to job growth numbers in coming months.
  • The hurricanes will also likely change average weekly hours worked due to job losses being concentrated in particular sectors (construction, for example). The change in weekly hours will mechanically affect calculated hourly wages, which are just weekly wages divided by total hours worked.
  • The BLS reported that 44,000 workers were on strike as well during the October reference week, which will further depress job growth for the month. Again, these temporary payroll losses will be nearly guaranteed to rebound and add to growth in coming months.

In short, unlike the last election, whoever wins the presidency next week is highly likely to inherit an extremely strong economy.