US Jobs hit a snag for October

In a surprise to most, Friday’s Jobs report released by the US Bureau of Labor gave a shockingly low figure of 12,000 non farm jobs created, but the caveat was that the low figure was faulted by hurricanes Milton and Helene and the Boeing strike. Despite that most economists and government officials state that the American economy is still solid. A truer picture will come in December with the release of the November report.

While there are still complains about high prices, especially at the grocery store, inflation has actually come down by 2,4 a steady decrease from 2.5 in September, but public sentiment is that it is still too high, perhaps forgetting that those pre pandemic prices are unlikely to come back; and, that once retailers and suppliers, confounded three years ago, by supply chain issues, and higher overhead saw consumers continue to shop, so they were unlikely to decrease their profit margins, even if they could do so.

The good news is that wages for October increased to 0.4 percent, making them higher than inflation, and correspondingly consumer spending remained high, the driver of the US economy.

NPR reported this: "You’re still seeing wages and salaries running ahead of inflation," says economist Sarah House at Wells Fargo. "So that’s still really beneficial for overall consumer spending growth and keeping it in the black.”

With the presidential election just around the corner and former president Donald Trump saying that he heard Americans and that the US single handedly bringing inflation down and restoring manufacturing jobs, while proposing a tariff that would increase consumer goods prices, a political conundrum exists.

VIce President Kamala Harris seems on surer ground with proposed efforts to prevent price gouging, but that might be a heavy lift without congressional support.

The Household Survey Data continue to show steady news: an unemployment rate little changed at 4.1 and the number of unemployed people at 7.0 million, great but perhaps not spectacular news for Harris, but neverthel;ess a solid number that the country can take pride in, Trump excepted.

Labor Force Participation those aged from 25 to 54 years old held a slight decrease from 83.8 percent to 83.5 percent,

Longterm unemployment remained at 1.6 million, little changed from the prior month. So, on an optimistic side, nothing lost, nothing gained, due to the storms and the Boeing layoff, but room for improvement, if not markedly so.

Temporary employment  took dramatic losses, since March of 2022, and steadily decreased for a few months, now reaching 49,000 for October.

Second to that significance was manufacturing which lost 46,000 jobs due to the decline of 44,000 in the manufacturing of transportation equipment from the machinist strike at Boeing.

All eyes are on the Federal Reserve Bank at their meeting next week, and they are expecting, as planned, a quarter percentage point decrease in interest rates to keep the economy chugging.