A Cringe-Worthy October Jobs Report

Whew, it’s nice to have that little thing called an election behind us, isn’t it? No more stupid TV commercials, no more yard sign farms, no more angst-filled rants on social media. Well, okay, there’s still plenty of those, but at least we know the results already!

For a change of pace, however, let’s look back a bit and check out the October jobs report. In short, it was not good.

Here are Five Fast Facts on October jobs:

  1. 📉 The Numbers - There were only 12k jobs added in October, far less than the 113k that was projected. That’s the worst number since December of 2020! 
  1. 👍 The Good - Health care was the MVP this month, adding 52k jobs. I think we can all agree that we want more great nurses and doctors, right? There’s still a shortage, though, so if you’re up for a career change, give it a look!
  1. 👎 The Bad - Manufacturing took a nosedive, losing 46k jobs overall. 😱  A union strike at Boeing and other strikes in transportation tanked it.
  1. 😣 The Ugly (Depending On Who You Ask) - The government sector added 40k jobs, pretty close to the average 43k they’ve added every month for a while now. Beware…the DOGE may be coming for these jobs before too long!
  1. 🤔 Things That Make You Go Hm - Now put on your tin foil hat, because some of these numbers look sketchy. It appears that the trend of downward revisions after the fact has continued, meaning almost every month was worse than initially reported. Also, if you take away the growth in government jobs then we’ve actually lost jobs overall. Was this an effort to look good right before an election? You decide, we’ll get the popcorn.

🔥Bottom line: It’s plain to see jobs aren’t in a good place right now. To be clear, the Biden administration is hardly the first to put its finger on the scales of economic reporting. We’d wager most of them probably have, to one degree or another. Regardless, it does seem likely that there was a lot of smoke and mirrors going on here, and the reality didn’t match the reporting, and a lot of normal people knew it (or at least felt it). Here’s hoping the number turns around soon no matter what the reporting says!

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