The U.S. economy added 12,000 jobs in October

The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was as cloudy as the storms that influenced it.

Despite two deadly hurricanes and major strikes in manufacturing, the U.S. economy still managed to add 12,000 jobs in October – albeit falling short of the 112,500 job gain expected by economists.

Economists had long warned of the ripple effects of the hurricanes and strikes on October’s employment numbers – with some estimating the impact at around 100,000 jobs. Reports from both August and September were also revised downward by a combined 112,000 jobs.

While the jobs report numbers are murky, the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.1%. It comes from a different survey than the jobs report and doesn’t count weather-impacted workers as unemployed.

Understandably, Manufacturing led the decline (-46,000) which was largely related to transportation equipment manufacturing losses stemming from the strikes at Boeing and its suppliers.

Healthcare (+52,000), Government (+40,000) and Construction ( +8,000) led employment gains. Other industries, such as Retail, Financial Activities, Information, Leisure and Hospitality, and Transportation/Warehousing, showed little change.

Average hourly earnings for all employees increased by .4% once again in October and the average workweek for all employees remained at 34.3 hours.

Both the labor force participation rate (62.6%) and the number of people employed part time who would have preferred full-time employment (4.6 million) changed little.

On Snagajob, overall job postings were up 3% month over month and up 27% year over year. Transportation led the gains over September (+60%) along with Construction (+42%), Education (+28%), Automotive (+27%) and Healthcare (+8%). Losses were driven by Warehouse & Production (-35%), Retail (-14%), Food & Restaurant (-9%) and Hotel & Hospitality (-6%) industries.

Here’s your roundup of key insights from the report:

CNN - Economists anticipate the 12,000 job gain to be revised upward next month – similar to how it did so in the month following Hurricane Harvey and Irma in September 2017.

USA Today - There’s little doubt the hurricanes and strikes affected the paltry jobs tally. About 512,000 people said they were unable to work because of the weather, compared to a historical average of 32,000.
This week, a separate barometer of wage growth that economists say is more accurate, called the employment cost index, showed that private-sector wages grew 3.8% in the third quarter, the slowest pace in three years.

New York Times - Wage growth has been outstripping inflation for months now, and that trend continued in October. While those figures could have been affected by the hurricanes, other measures point to the same trend: Pay gains are cooling gradually but remain very solid.

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Overall Snagajob Hourly Jobs

All industry data is from 1/1/2023-10/31/2024

Here are the latest overall job numbers:

Overall hourly jobs are up 3% month over month, and up 27% year over year.