Cool, cool, cooling jobs

0:01NPR

0:11This is The Indicator for Planet Money. I'm Adrienne Ma. I'm Waylon Wong. And I'm Darian Woods. And it is Jobs Friday. It is the day of the month where we check in on how the economy is working for real people, as opposed to not real people. Cardboard cutouts of people. It was just Halloween yesterday. The ghouls, the ghosts, the ghost jobs. We're not counting those. In keeping with our usual Jobs Friday tradition, we will start with the headline numbers from the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly jobs report. The report which came out this morning shows unemployment in October was at 4.1%.

0:48So no change from the month before. Also, the economy added just 12 ,000 new jobs. And the BLS revised its previous estimates for jobs gains in August and September, saying that they were lower by about a combined 112 ,000. So that is good news, at least on the surface for Republicans, and less good for the Democrats going into the election next week. I think we can expect this lackluster jobs report to become sort of a political football this week. That is definitely true, especially considering the positive economic data we've seen recently. Inflation cooling, consumer spending and GDP growing.

1:25Yes, although it's very important to say here that economists expected October employment to be weak. That's because of a worker strike at Boeing and two big hurricanes that hit the East Coast. And we'll get into that more on today's show. After the break, Whalen tells us why we should not draw too many conclusions from this month's jobs report. And Darian gives some flowers to the data nerds who put it all together.

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3:07Learn how at AmazonBusiness.com. All right, we're back. It's Jobs Friday. Waylon Wong, start us off. I wanted to talk about noise in the jobs numbers. This month was expected to be kind of a tricky one to read because of two big factors, hurricanes and a strike at Boeing. Economists expected these things to make the number of jobs added smaller than maybe it would be otherwise. Earlier this month, Christopher Waller, who is on the board of the Federal Reserve, said the hurricanes plus the Boeing strike could reduce the number by more than 100 ,000 jobs. The strike has been going on with Boeing for like over a month now, right?

3:45Yeah, around 33 ,000 people from the Machinists and Aerospace Workers Union went on strike in mid-September. There was some other strike activity in October as well. So the BLS counts a total of 44 ,000 workers on strike during the period that's covered in the latest jobs report. And then there's also the hurricanes. Right. So there was Helene in late September and Milton in early October. And it's hard to parse exactly how the hurricanes affected the jobs numbers because it depends on the timing of when people are out of work and when the BLS conducts its survey. So if you look at economists' forecast for the jobs numbers heading up to today, there was a pretty big range.

4:22Like everyone was just kind of putting in their best guess. It's interesting that even with the variation in the numbers of jobs added that the unemployment rate actually didn't change. Right. So that actually has to do with how these numbers get calculated. The BLS uses a survey of businesses to get their payrolls number. And if they were employees who, let's say, couldn't work because of a hurricane and they didn't get paid for the entire period covered in the BLS survey, that would result in a lower payrolls number. But the unemployment rate is calculated from a survey of households. And in that survey, let's say you're out of work because of severe weather or you're on strike, but you still technically have a job, you are still counted as employed.

5:03And so we're looking at the jobs report through this lens of what the speed, direction and travel of the U.S. economy is. But it's worth reminding ourselves that those still are people that are not receiving a paycheck right at this moment. And so that is what the employment side is capturing. Absolutely. And these kind of things make it really hard for the number crunchers at the BLS to try and get an accurate picture of what is happening with jobs. That's right. And that work isn't always appreciated, is it, Darian? That is true. I want to highlight something about the jobs report, which is the integrity of the very agency that puts it together.

5:41The BLS. Yes, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So the other day I was speaking at this conference and was asked, how can we know which numbers to trust? You know, so much is politicized. You know what? This reminds me of last Jobs Friday when the report came out. Republican Senator Marco Rubio tweeted that this was another fake jobs report out from the Biden-Harris government. So comments like that don't exactly build trust in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And I think for people who aren't deep in the weeds of labor data, this is a fair question because some agencies do seem to be more politically supportive of whoever's in charge.

6:19Check out the Department of Energy's X account recently, which celebrates the creation of manufacturing jobs that it links to the Biden-Harris administration. But the BLS is different, really. It has this longstanding commitment to just the facts. So on its website, it says, if asked, is the glass half empty or half full? At the BLS, we see an eight ounce glass containing four ounces. Does it really say that? It does. I was reading some of their FAQs earlier when I was researching my segment. I didn't come across that one. That must be on their funny FAQ page. Yeah, yeah. It's a little Easter egg for the data nerds out there.

6:56And look, here are a few more reasons why you can trust the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS has oversight from the Department of Labor Office of Inspector General. The agency also has these really strict procedures about its data releases, like limiting access to who can see it ahead of time. and it's transparent about how it collects data. This is all documented on its website. And the agency even let us at the indicator listen in on a survey collection for Jobs Friday a couple of years ago. And we'll, of course, link to that. I think what you hear a lot of confusion and chatter about is that the jobs numbers monthly reports get revised at regular intervals.

7:33Yeah, so these revisions are annoying when they tell a different story. But look, there is nothing at all nefarious here. It is just about more data becoming available. like businesses returning surveys and phone calls late. So the revisions are a reminder that no single jobs report can be relied on to tell the full picture. And that, I think, was probably good advice to leave this particular Jobs Friday on. The one right before the election. Exactly. One jobs report an economy does not make.

8:12This episode was produced by Corey Bridges with engineering by Sina Lafredo. It was fact-checked by Julia Ritchie. Kicking Cannon is our show's editor and the indicators are production of NPR.

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