U.S. employers added only 12,000 jobs in October, falling far short of forecasts and delivering a blow to Vice President Kamala Harris in the waning days of a campaign that has focused on economic issues.
The jobs report Friday was the final major economic release before Election Day, and came in well below Wall Street estimates of 100,000 jobs.
While Democrats and economists pointed to outside factors such as hurricanes Helene and Milton and the Boeing strike, former President Donald Trump pounced on the news as a sign of a failing Biden-Harris agenda.
“This jobs report is a catastrophe and definitively reveals how badly Kamala Harris broke our economy,” said Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%, in line with expectations, and Wall Street pointed to extenuating circumstances, largely shrugging off the poor numbers. Trading on the stock market was up significantly before noon.
The political world did not shrug off the report, however, with Trump supporters calling it a sign of a broken status quo under President Biden and Ms. Harris.
“The worst jobs report since the pandemic is a sign of things to come under a second Harris term,” said Alfredo Ortiz, CEO of the conservative Job Creators Network. “Due to the bad policies her administration has implemented, including historic spending, crushing regulations, and a war on domestic energy, the labor market has dramatically softened.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said while employment trended upward in health care and government, the temporary help services sector lost jobs and employment declined sharply in manufacturing.
“Manufacturing employment decreased by 46,000 in October, reflecting a decline of 44,000 in transportation equipment manufacturing that was largely due to strike activity,” the bureau said.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers said it “cautions against overreacting to any one report” and blamed the seven-week machinist strike at Boeing, a major aerospace manufacturer, and hurricanes Helene and Milton for the lousy numbers.
“CEA continues to view the labor market and economy as strong, as indicated by an array of recent macroeconomic data, including the steady, low 4.1% unemployment rate,” the advisers said on X.
Still, Ms. Harris can ill afford bad news four days before Election Day.
Inflation and other economic pressures have hurt her campaign against Mr. Trump.
The GOP nominee is dogged by concerns about his temperament and actions after the 2020 election but buoyed by fond memories of the economy in the first three years of the Trump administration.
While millions of Americans have already voted, the race will likely be decided by tens of thousands of votes in seven battleground states.
House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, Missouri Republican, joined the Republican National Committee and others in accusing the Biden-Harris administration of “stunning incompetence.”
“If you look under the hood of the Biden-Harris jobs market,” he said, “the facts show an ongoing struggle for blue-collar workers, a boom for bureaucrats, and paychecks that don’t pay the bills anymore.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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