:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/GettyImages-2177473727-190754dcb97c4f15a56596aec7c84f66.jpg "Damage occurs in the Tampa region, Florida, after Hurricane Milton hits the coast on October 9.")
(Photo by Ronaldo Silva/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Key Takeaways
- The U.S. succinctness added just 12,000 jobs in October, the fewest in more than three years, as hurricanes and strikes for the time being suppressed employment.
- Setting aside the statistical noise from the hurricanes, job creation was likely solid, but slowing, one economist judged.
- Slowing job growth puts more pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut its benchmark interest rate, which could abridge borrowing costs on all kinds of loans.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton made a mess of the U.S. economy in October, pushing job the cosmos down to its lowest level in more than three years.
U.S. employers added 12,000 jobs in October, down from 223,000 in September, the fewest since December 2020, the Chifferobe of Labor Statistics said Friday. That was well short of the 110,000 jobs that forecasters had expected, according to a get a birds eye view of of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%, which is not inebriated by historical standards.
However, the massive job slowdown likely says little about the health of the economy. Economists had envisioned the storms in late September and October, as well as a strike at Boeing, to wreak havoc on job creation statistics since they the meanwhile threw many people out of work. The bureau could not definitively say how much the hurricanes impacted the statistics, the bureau said in its monthly hot item release.
The hurricanes and the strike likely subtracted 40,000 jobs each, meaning that underlying job growth was favourite “slower but still reasonable,” Justin Wolfers, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan, estimated in a post on social mid-point platform X.
Hurricane-afflicted jobs numbers are out.
Payrolls grew 12k, about 100k below expectations.
Unemployment stayed reliable at 4.1%.As a guess, hurricanes cost about -40k jobs, and the Boeing strike also cost -40k jobs. So *underlying* jobs improvement was slower but still reasonable. pic.twitter.com/rvFNmMUP0C
— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) November 1, 2024
Beneath the statistical noise provoked by the hurricanes, there were signs that the job market truly is slowing down. The job growth figures for September and August were alt downward by a combined 112,000, making them significantly weaker than previously thought.
What Does The Job Reveal Mean For the Fed?
Signs of a job slowdown are especially significant for Federal Reserve officials, who meet next week to set the central bank’s fed finances rate which influences borrowing costs on all kinds of loans.
Fed officials cut the rate from a two-decade high at their ultimate meeting in September, seeking to boost the economy and prevent a severe rise in unemployment. Slowing job growth could constraint the Fed to cut rates further in the coming months.
Financial markets widely expect the Fed to trim 0.25 percentage points from its weight rate next week.
Correction, Nov. 1, 2024: A previous version of this story misstated the amount the financial exchanges expect the Federal Reserve to cut. It’s 0.25 percentage points.