Not Good

We have the monthly jobs numbers out, and we have seen the slowest workforce growth since the pandemic recovery began.

We had 150,000 jobs added, which is less than the roughly 175,000 required to account for natural workforce growth, and the unemployment rate rose to 3.9%, up by 0.1% from September and up by ½% over the past 6 months.

It should be noted that there were about 30,000 autoworkers on strike in October, which puts the delta in non-farm payrolls close to the rate of natural workforce growth.

Job growth slowed sharply last month, a sign the U.S. economy is cooling this fall after a torrid summer.

Employers added 150,000 jobs in October, half the prior month’s gain and the smallest monthly increase since June, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate rose to 3.9%, up a half-point since April, and wage growth slowed.

If sustained, a hiring pullback is likely to bring the Federal Reserve’s historic interest-rate increases to an end by providing stronger evidence that higher borrowing costs have slowed the economy. The report could also mollify concerns that brisk consumer spending this summer would lead hiring or wages to reaccelerate.

………

The report suggests a downshift in the labor market that outperformed expectations most of this year. Now employers are pulling back in light of high interest rates, persistent inflation and wars in Europe and the Middle East.

Moreover, just three sectors—healthcare, government and leisure and hospitality—accounted for nearly all the job gains, leaving the rest of the overall economy with no net job growth. This contrasts with the more broad-based hiring seen earlier this year.

………

Automakers had around 33,000 fewer workers on payroll because of the United Auto Workers strike, the department said. Transportation and warehousing industries lost 12,000 and information industries, which include striking film and television actors, lost 9,000.

Job gains in August and September were revised down by 101,000.

Average hourly earnings rose 4.1% from a year ago, down from 4.3% in September. Wage gains have been slowing since March 2022, when annual raises were near 6%. The number of Americans working or looking for work fell slightly in October for the first time since April.

It looks like Jerome Powell is getting the recession that he wants so badly, just in time for the election.