Final jobs report before Election Day shows US economy added 12,000 positions amid strikes and storms

By Alicia Wallace, CNN

(CNN) — The final jobs report before Election Day presented a murky picture of the economy, with just 12,000 jobs added in October as hurricanes and striking workers muddied the data, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.

While that is far below September’s revised total of 223,000 jobs and expectations for a 112,500-job gain, economists had projected that recent extreme weather and ongoing labor strikes would heavily distort the data.

The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%, providing a signal of underlying strength in the labor market.

Friday’s jobs report is the last major piece of economic data to land before Election Day.

The dual hurricanes of Helene and Milton, which made landfall on September 26 and October 9, respectively, impacted the ability for the BLS to collect data from businesses in the affected regions, officials for the labor data agency wrote in a note accompanying the jobs report.

In the establishment survey — one of two surveys that feed into the monthly employment report — the reference period is the pay period that includes the 12th of the month. If an employee worked and received pay for any part of that period, they will be counted as employed.

“It is likely that payroll employment estimates in some industries were affected by the hurricanes; however, it is not possible to quantify the net effect on the over-the-month change in national employment, hours, or earnings estimates because the establishment survey is not designed to isolate effects from extreme weather events,” BLS officials wrote in the report.

There was no discernible effect in the household survey, which generates the unemployment rate, as the survey counts people who miss that week of work for weather-related events as employed (regardless of pay).

As such, even though the household survey is typically considered the more volatile of the two, how much or how little the unemployment rate shifts could provide a true indicator of how the underlying labor market is faring, economists told CNN this week.

This story is developing and will be updated.

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