Evelyn Reynolds

When the votes are counted in the U.S. presidential election, will it be the gender gap, the income gap, the Latino vote or the media and marketing campaigns that turned out to be decisive?
CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Liesman sat down with four polling experts for an in-depth look into the data to see which ones could turn the election to either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump. The panel included Steve Kornacki, NBC News national political correspondent; Mark Murray, NBC News senior political editor; Micah Roberts, Public Opinion Strategies partner and CNBC’s Republican pollster; and Jay Campbell, Hart Research partner and CNBC’s Democratic pollster.

The conclusion? Yes, it is likely to be the economy. But it is also other factors such as character and turnout, which candidate represents change, who generates enthusiasm and who the persuadable voters finally decide to support that will help determine the outcome.
See the full video above to hear the discussion.

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America’s consumer price index, a key inflation gauge, was up 2.4% in September compared to the same period in 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
On Friday, new data showed U.S. job creation in October slowed to its weakest pace since late 2020.
Markets largely ignored the bad news, as the nonfarm payrolls report flagged acute climate and labor disruptions.

A trader works as a screen displays the Fed rate announcement, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on June 12, 2024.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Major Wall Street CEOs see ongoing inflation pressures in the U.S. economy and aren’t convinced that the Federal Reserve will continue its rate-easing path with a further two reductions this year.
The Fed cut its benchmark rate by 50 basis points in September, indicating a turning point in its management of the U.S. economy and in its outlook for inflation. In late-September reports, strategists at J.P. Morgan and Fitch Ratings had predicted two additional interest rate trims by the end of 2024 and expect such reductions to continue into 2025.

The CME Group’s FedWatch tool puts the probability of a 25-basis-point cut at this week’s November meeting at 98%. The current probability of the benchmark rate being taken down by another 25 basis points at the December meeting is 78%.
But some CEOs appear skeptical. Speaking last week at Saudi Arabia’s showcase economic conference, the Future Investment Initiative, they see more inflation on the horizon for the U.S., as the nation’s economic activity and both presidential candidates’ policies involve developments that will potentially be inflationary and stimulatory — such as public spending, the onshoring of manufacturing, and tariffs.

A group of CEOs speaking at an FII panel moderated by CNBC’s Sara Eisen — which included Wall Street hegemons such as the bosses of Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered and State Street — were asked to raise their hand if they thought two additional rate cuts would be implemented by the Fed this year.
No one put their hand up.
“I think inflation is stickier, honestly, you look at the kind of jobs report and the wage reports in the U.S., I think it’s going to be hard for inflation to come down to the 2% level,” Jenny Johnson, Franklin Templeton president and CEO, told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday, saying she thinks only one further interest rate cut will take place this year.

“Remember a year ago, we were all here talking about recession? Was there going to be [one]? Nobody’s talking about recession anymore,” she said.
Larry Fink, whose mammoth BlackRock fund oversees over $10 trillion in assets, also sees one rate reduction before the end of 2024.
“I think it’s fair to say we’re going to have at least a 25 [basis-point cut], but, that being said, I do believe we have greater embedded inflation in the world than we’ve ever seen,” Fink said at another FII panel last week.
“We have government and policy that is much more inflationary. Immigration — our policies of onshoring, all of this — no one is asking the question ‘at what cost.’ Historically we were, I would say, a more consumer-driven economy, the cheapest products were the best and the most progressive way of politicking,” he noted. 

America’s consumer price index, a key inflation gauge, was up 2.4% in September compared to the same period in 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure is a tick down from the 2.5% print of August, implying a slowdown in price growth. The September reading was also the smallest annual one since February 2021.
On Friday, new data showed U.S. job creation in October slowed to its weakest pace since late 2020. Markets largely ignored the bad news, as the nonfarm payrolls report flagged acute climate and labor disruptions.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said inflation will more embedded into the global economy than what market participants are currently predicting, meaning price rises could prove to be stickier than the consensus.
“That doesn’t mean that it’s going to rear its head in a particularly ugly way, but I do think there’s the potential, depending on policy actions that are taken, that it can be more of a headwind than the current market consensus,” he said.
Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick went even further, declaring last Tuesday that the days of easy money and zero-interest rates are firmly in the past.
“The end of financial repression, of zero interest rates and zero inflation, that era is over. Interest rates will be higher, will be challenged around the world. And the end of ‘the end of history’ — geopolitics are back and will be part of the challenge for decades to come,” Pick said, referencing the famous 1992 Francis Fukuyama book, “The End of History and the Last Man,” which argued that conflicts between nations and ideologies were a thing of the past with the ending of the Cold War.

Speaking on Sara Eisen’s panel Tuesday, Apollo Global CEO Marc Rowan even questioned why the Fed was cutting rates at a time when so much fiscal stimulus had propped up a healthy-looking U.S. economy. He noted the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act and an increase in defense production.
“We’re all talking about, in the U.S., of shades of good. We really are talking about shades of good. And to come back to your point on rates, we massively increased rates, and yet, [the] stock market [is] at a record high, no unemployment, capital market issuance at will, and we’re stimulating the economy?,” he said.
“I’m trying to remember why we’re cutting rates, other than to try and equalize the bottom quartile,” he later added. More

Voters walk to cast their ballots during early voting in the presidential election at a polling station at the C. Blythe Andrews, Jr. Public Library in Tampa, Florida, U.S., November 1, 2024. 
Octavio Jones | Reuters

Executives at America’s largest companies are talking publicly with investors about the presidential election more so than in recent cycles.
The word “election” came up on 100 earnings calls of S&P 500-listed firms between Sept. 15 and Oct. 31, according to FactSet. That’s the highest number of companies in the broad index mentioning the word during that timeframe, according to CNBC screens of the same period going back to 2004. The U.S. presidential election is Tuesday Nov. 5.

The economy is on the minds of everyday Americans as they head to the polls for what’s shaping up to be a neck-and-neck race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. At the same time, white-collar leaders are considering potential policy impacts on their businesses, while lamenting a general uncertainty tied to the political season.
“Because of election uncertainty and a variety of other things, you can feel a little bit of caution out there,” Dover CEO Richard Tobin told analysts on the specialty manufacturer’s earnings call in late October.

FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butters first pointed out the volume of companies discussing elections in recent weeks. Notably, his data found that very few executives of S&P 500 companies mentioned Harris or Trump by name, talking about the race more broadly.

‘Prudent’ clients

Multiple companies cited a feeling of unpredictability tied to the presidential race among consumers and business clients.
At Tractor Supply, CEO Harry Lawton said its customer was expected to remain “prudent” like past election years. That comes after the farm-focused retailer reported a bump in emergency response sales to start the quarter following Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Southwest Airlines, meanwhile, expects a “trough” in air travel around Election Day, according to operations chief Andrew Watterson. But when it comes to booking trends, Royal Caribbean CEO Michael Bayley said there has historically been no long-term impact from presidential elections, though the cruise line may see some volatility the week of the contest.

Southwest Airlines airplanes are serviced at their gates at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on May 18, 2024, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Gary Hershorn | Corbis News | Getty Images

In addition to Election Day, market participants and business leaders are also closely monitoring the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy meeting next week. Tool maker Stanley Black & Decker CEO Donald Allan listed both the election and interest rates as reasons to anticipate “choppy markets” into the first half of 2025.
Fed funds futures are pricing in a roughly 96% chance of a decrease to the borrowing cost at the November meeting, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool as of Friday evening. That comes after the central bank in September issued its first rate cut since 2020.
Stanley Black & Decker’s Allan also pointed out Trump’s policy on taxing imports, noting that America would be “likely in a new tariff regime.” The Republican nominee has said he plans to impose a 20% tax on imports, with an extra high rate of 60% on those coming from China.
William Grogan, CFO of water infrastructure company Xylem, said the election is one factor creating a “little bit of a pause” in the industrial market for big projects. Republic Services CEO Jon Vander Ark said the waste disposal company sees “a little bit of paralysis in an election year,” but he’s optimistic heading into the end of 2024 and start of 2025.

Watching the economy

More broadly, Eric Ashleman CEO of Idex, which makes components for everything from air bags to DNA testing equipment, said the race hasn’t helped the economic backdrop recently.
Nonfarm payrolls grew by the smallest number of jobs in October going back to late 2020 due to hurricanes and the Boeing strike. In this vein, Equifax said it saw softness in background screening volumes as executives consider what the outcome can mean for their businesses.
“Coming into the election, it feels like companies are being a little more prudent about the new hiring,” Equifax CEO Mark Begor said.
To be sure, some of the “election” mentions this year were tied to unrelated events like enrollment periods for health care. Other firms ranging from software company Tyler Technologies to credit card giant American Express said they haven’t felt impacts from the election on the business.

Source: American Express

“This company has been around a long time,” American Express CEO Stephen Squeri told analysts last month. “I mean, obviously, we didn’t have cards 174 years ago. But we’ve been around for lots of different elections; lots of different configurations of the House, the Senate and so forth.”
Equity Residential CEO Mark Parrell, meanwhile, said state and local government is considered more important to the business than which party is victorious on the top of the ticket. Indeed, the company is a real estate investment trust that invests in apartments.

Moving forward

Still, this cycle has appeared to engage a uniquely high number of leaders within corporate America’s largest firms. The 2024 mentions count equates to the word “election” during that timeframe coming up on calls of around one in every five companies within the S&P 500. It’s also more than triple the number of references during the same period in 2008.
D.R. Horton is seeing buyers “stay on the sidelines” given the expectation for lower mortgage rates in 2025 and the stress tied to the election, according to CEO Paul Romanowski. The homebuilder is attempting to boost demand by offering mortgage buydowns and focusing on building houses with smaller floor plans, he said.
Another member of D.R. Horton’s C-suite spoke about the election more bluntly.
“I think everybody would be happy the election is over,” chief operating officer Michael Murray told analysts on the company’s earnings call. “I think that will help buyer sentiment and the ability to move forward with their life decision.” More

The October jobs report marked the weakest pace of job creation since 2020.
Employment growth across industries showed a mixed U.S. economy.
Growth in the period was led by health care and social assistance as well as the government.

Getty Images

The jobs report for October came in much weaker than expected, and employment growth across different industries painted a mixed picture for the U.S. economy.
The biggest contribution last month came from health care and social assistance, with 51,300 new positions added in that area, per data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If private education is included with the health-care group, like some economists do, the category would have shown even more growth at 57,000.

Government had the second-highest gains in the period, seeing jobs surge by 40,000. That is close to the group’s average monthly gain of roughly 43,000 in the prior 12 months.
Meanwhile, wholesale trade and construction also saw some gains, recording growth of 10,400 and 8,000, respectively.

Other industries recorded massive losses, however. Professional and business services led the way, posting declines of 47,000. Manufacturing was right behind that category, declining by 46,000.
Notably, the Bureau of Labor Statistics cited strike activity as a driver of the declines in manufacturing. Boeing’s machinist strike has been going on for more than seven weeks. On Thursday, however, Boeing and the union reached a sweetened contract offer that will be voted on Monday.
Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter’s chief economist, said that while this report “largely” reflects the effects of the strike and storms such as Hurricanes Helene and Milton, it is not necessarily a “blip.”

“It is quite consistent with the big picture and the ongoing labor market slowdown that we’ve seen over the past two years,” she told CNBC. “The main issue in the labor market is still restricted monetary policy, not strikes and storms, and that actually is sort of a consistent narrative that we’ve seen.”
Leisure and hospitality, the leader of employment growth in the September report, and retail trade were two other key areas marred by declines. The former shrank by 4,000 jobs, while the latter shrank even more at 6,400.

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The unemployment rate for white workers inched higher to 3.8% in October from 3.6% in September.
This bucked the overall unemployment rate, which held steady at 4.1% last month.
Jobless rates were also unchanged for Black and Hispanic Americans, while unemployment crept lower for Asian workers in October.

A jobseeker holds flyers during the New York Public Library’s annual Bronx Job Fair & Expo at the the Bronx Library Center in the Bronx borough of New York, US, on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. 
Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The unemployment rate for white Americans inched higher in October, according to data released Friday by the Department of Labor.
In October, white Americans saw their jobless rate rise to 3.8% from 3.6% in the month prior. This trend bucked the overall unemployment rate for the country, which held steady at 4.1% in October from September, as well as for the other demographic groups.

The jobless rates for Black and Hispanic workers were unchanged last month at 5.7% and 5.1%, respectively. Asian Americans saw their unemployment rate creep lower to 3.9% from 4.1%.
On the other hand, the jobless rates for both white men and women edged higher in October. For the men, it increased to 3.5% from 3.4%. For women, it rose to 3.3% from 3.1%.

While Hispanic women saw their jobless rate climb to 5.2% from 4.8%, unemployment rates for their male counterparts slid to 4.0% from 4.1%. The unemployment rate also ticked lower for Black women to 4.9% from 5.3%, while it climbed to 5.7% from 5.1% for Black men.
To Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, this jump indicates the distortion and volatility in month-to-month data, especially considering that the jobless rate for Black men dropped to 5.1% in September from 5.9% in August.
“I think that the big increase that we saw in Black male unemployment in October was really just renormalizing after the big, unusual drop in September,” she told CNBC.

Shierholz added that October’s unemployment numbers were also unusually affected by the hurricanes and labor strikes, making it even more difficult to compare these data points.
“You never want to focus on one month’s data, and that is more true than ever right now because this month’s data was so distorted by these unusual temporary factors,” she said.
In October, the overall labor force participation rate — the percentage of the population either employed or actively seeking work — ticked down to 62.6% in October from 62.7% in September.

Among white workers, the labor force participation rate also inched lower to 62.2% in October from 62.4% in the prior month, while it declined to 66.9% from 67.4% for Hispanic workers. Within Asian workers, the participation advanced to 65.5% in October from 65.3% in September, while it held steady for Black Americans at 62.9%.
— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report. More

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 12,000 for the month, down sharply from September and below the Dow Jones estimate for 100,000.
The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, in line with expectations.
The BLS noted that the Boeing strike likely subtracted 44,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector, while hurricanes also likely held back the total.
Revisions lowered previously reported job creation totals by 112,000 for August and September combined.

Job creation in October slowed to its weakest pace since late 2020 as the impacts of storms in the Southeast and a significant labor impasse dented the employment picture.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 12,000 for the month, down sharply from September and below the Dow Jones estimate for 100,000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. In what had already been expected to be a downbeat report, October posted the smallest gain since December 2020.

The unemployment rate, however, held at 4.1%, in line with expectations. A broader measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons also was unchanged at 7.7%.
In the report narrative, the BLS noted that the Boeing strike likely subtracted 44,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector, which lost 46,000 positions overall.

Along with that, the report noted the impact of hurricanes Helene and Milton but said “it is not possible to quantify the net effect” of the storms on the jobs total.
Elsewhere, the bureau said average hourly earnings increased 0.4% for the month, slightly higher than the estimate, though the 4% 12-month gain was in line. The average work week held steady at 34.3 hours.
Markets, though, largely ignored the bad news, with stock market futures poised for a strong open on Wall Street while Treasury yields plunged. The meager jobs numbers along with wages about in line with expectations help cement another interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve next week.

“At first glance, October’s jobs report paints a picture of growing fragility in the U.S. labor market, but under the surface is a muddy report roiled by climate and labor disruptions,” said Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “While the impacts of these events are real and should not be ignored, they are likely temporary and not a signal of a collapsing job market.”

The release comes just days ahead of the presidential election in which Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are in what most polls show to be a deadlocked race. With the economy at the forefront of the battle, the light jobs number “casts a murky shadow heading into next week,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS.
The weak October report also included substantial downward revisions from previous months. August was cut to just a gain of 78,000 while September’s initial estimate came down to 223,000. Together, the net revisions lowered previously reported job creation totals by 112,000.

Health care and government again led job creation, respectively adding 52,000 and 40,000 positions. Several sectors, though, saw job losses.
In addition to the expected pullback in manufacturing, temporary help services saw a drop of 49,000. The category is sometimes seen as a proxy for underlying job strength and has seen a decline of 577,000 since March 2022, the BLS said.
Another leading sector, leisure and hospitality, saw a drop of 4,000, while retail trade and transportation and warehousing also reported modest declines.
In the household survey, which is used to calculate the unemployment rate, the hiring numbers were even weaker.
That showed 368,000 fewer people reported holding jobs and the labor force contracting by 220,000. Full-time employment declined by 164,000, while part-timers fell by 227,000.
The report covers a month in which hurricanes Helene and Milton slammed the Southeast – Florida and North Carolina in particular – while the Boeing strike also hit what had been a vibrant though slowing labor market. Recent developments indicate that the Boeing impasse could be near an end.
Prior to the release, job creation had averaged close to 200,000 a month during 2024, about 60,000 below the pace for the same period a year ago through still indicative of solid pace of hiring.
Some cracks in recent months have raised concerns at the Federal Reserve that while the year-over-year pace of inflation is slowing, elevated interest rate could impact the labor market and threaten the ongoing economic expansion.
As a result, policymakers in September took a step unprecedented for a growing economy and lowered their benchmark short-term interest rate by half a percentage point, double the customary quarter-point increments in which the Fed usually likes to move.
Financial markets are pricing in a strong likelihood that the central bank cuts by a quarter point at each of its two remaining meetings this year. The rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee will announce its decision next Thursday. More