() – The final jobs report before the election presented an unclear picture of the economy, with only 12,000 new jobs in October, as hurricanes and striking workers clouded the data, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday. .
While this is well below September’s total of 223,000 jobs and expectations for an increase of 112,500 jobs, economists had projected that recent extreme weather and ongoing labor strikes would greatly distort the data.
The unemployment rate remained stable at 4.1%, providing a sign of underlying strength in the labor market.
This Friday’s jobs report is the last major piece of economic data to come before Election Day.
Twin hurricanes Helene and Milton, which struck on Sept. 26 and Oct. 9, respectively, impacted the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ ability to collect data from businesses in affected regions, labor data agency officials wrote. in a note accompanying the employment report.
In the establishment survey—one of the two surveys that feed into the monthly employment report—the reference period is the pay period that includes the 12th of the month. If an employee worked and received pay for any part of that period, they will be counted as an employee.
“Payroll employment estimates in some industries have likely been affected by the hurricanes; However, it is not possible to quantify the net effect on the monthly change in national employment, hours, or earnings estimates because the survey is not designed to isolate the effects of extreme weather events,” officials wrote in the report.
There was no discernible effect in the household survey, which generates the unemployment rate, since it counts people who miss that week of work due to weather-related events as employees (regardless of pay).
As such, although the household survey is typically considered the more volatile of the two, how much or how little the unemployment rate shifts could provide a true indicator of how the underlying labor market is doing, economists told this week.
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