The final pre-election jobs report is out today and the numbers are not good. As always, the numbers are judged relative to the expectations set by market analysts. The expectations for today's report said there would be around 112,000 jobs added, far lower than September.

As of Thursday morning, FactSet consensus estimates were for a net gain of 112,500 jobs in October. That would mark a sharp drop-off from the surprisingly strong preliminary estimate of 254,000 jobs added in September.

That turned out to be a huge overestimate. The actual jobs added last month came out to just 12,000. The NY Times reported this as a gift to Republicans.

For weeks, the economic news has been at odds with the surly mood of voters and the apocalyptic predictions of impending collapse by former President Donald J. Trump, but in Friday’s weak jobs report, the Republicans finally got the numbers they needed to bolster their claims that the Biden administration has destroyed the economy.

Employers added only 12,000 positions in October, a month that included a major strike and two destructive hurricanes, the Labor Department reported. 

It's true that a strike at Boeing and two hurricanes had a big impact on the numbers. And yet, there's only so much lipstick you can put on a pig. In addition to the terrible number for last month, the numbers for the two previous months were also revised downward.

Employers were previously estimated to have hired 159,000 new workers in August. Now, they’re believed to have hired closer to 78,000, according to the new estimates published in the October jobs report. And hiring in September was revised down by 31,000 to 223,000.

So we can offer explanations for October but the bottom line is that jobs numbers haven't been great all year and seem to be trending down.

Hiring has been trending lower over the past year. The US economy has added an average of 170,000 jobs each month so far this year. That’s pretty good, but down from 251,000 last year and 377,000 in 2022 as the economy was recovering from the effects of the pandemic.

But hiring has slowed even further in recent months. Four of the five past months have been below or well below the year’s average...

The stock market is actually up today (though still down for the week), partly because the bad jobs numbers guarantee there will be another interest rate cut when the FED meets this month. There had been some concern that the FED might see the jobs market as still running too hot. Well, not anymore.

Charles Payne posted a list of reports over the past 20+ months along with the revisions.

Jobs Report is a disaster and its disingenuous to assume "experts" that contributed to consensus didn't factor into their estimates hurricanes and strikes.

Moreover, huge negative revisions continue to reveal a much weaker labor market than the media and economists portray. pic.twitter.com/bf8RKJ6gMa

— Charles V Payne (@cvpayne) November 1, 2024

Some are also pointing out the media's reaction to the final jobs report before the 2020 election.

Flashback to 2020 when the media treated “just 661k” new jobs as bad news for Trump pic.twitter.com/Ore3R78x6c

— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) November 1, 2024

Hugh Hewitt called today's numbers the "closing argument" for Trump.

The closing argument for former President Trump. Today's job report. Illustration from the @washingtonpost pic.twitter.com/gLRe1LTJz7

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) November 1, 2024

Again, there are some one time explanations for the bad October numbers but does anyone believe the media would care about those if the situation were reversed. We've all seen how they handled Biden's "garbage" comments and now Trump's comments about Liz Cheney, which are being wildly misstated for the sake of another bogus attack in the final week. Let the Democrats explain all they want. The numbers are still really bad.