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    The Jobs Report on Friday May Be a Fluke and a Political Football

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    This close to an election, even the driest economic data can be politicized. So if the monthly jobs report lands on Friday with an unusually low number of jobs created in October, Republican campaigns may blast it out as a sign that the labor market has taken a turn for the worse. (Last month, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida reacted to a strong report by calling it “fake.”)That wouldn’t necessarily be true.The last couple of months have seen an unusual amount of disruption. First came the Boeing strike in September, taking some 35,000 workers off payrolls, plus another 6,000 from smaller strikes. Then came Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which spiked unemployment claims by about 35,000 in early October.All in all, economists are forecasting a gain of 110,000 jobs in October. That would be a significant step down from the 186,000 jobs added on average over each of the previous three months, pending any revisions. But it also wouldn’t be an accurate representation of employers’ appetite to hire.In general, a broad spectrum of data suggests that the labor market has settled into a moderate pace of job growth, enough to soak up the 150,000 or so people who enter the work force each month. The unemployment rate has fallen back to 4.1 percent, and overall economic growth came in strong last quarter, showing that the foundations of the economy are sound. More

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    U.S. Employers Add 254,000 Jobs in September as Economic Growth Remains Solid

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    U.S. employers added 254,000 jobs in September, a sign that economic growth remained solid. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent.Many have doubted it. Even the optimists have worried about it. But despite the hand-wringing, the American economy appears to be in remarkably good shape.Businesses added 254,000 jobs in September, the government reported on Friday, far surpassing forecasts. It was a sign that the economy, rather than stumbling into a slowdown, still has a spring in its step.The unemployment rate declined to 4.1 percent, from 4.2 percent. Reported pay gains for workers were also better than expected, at 4 percent over the previous 12 months, an uptick from the August reading. With inflation continuing to ease substantially, that is welcome news for households trying to gain financial traction.A Slight DropUnemployment rate More

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    A Strong Jobs Report Suggests the Economy Is More Resilient Than We Thought

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    For months, the economy has been like a jigsaw with one mismatched piece: Consumer spending has been holding up and overall growth has been solid, but the job market has looked treacherously wobbly.As of Friday, the last piece of that puzzle is finally clicking into place.Fresh employment data for September showed that hiring picked up strongly, the unemployment rate dipped and wage growth came in strong — adding to a string of recent data pointing to economic resilience.And the incoming evidence points to a clear conclusion: The economy is robust.Data revisions released last week showed that growth has been stronger and incomes have been more solid than previously understood. Retail sales data are holding up. And now, employers appear to be meeting resilient consumer demand by continuing to expand their work forces.In fact, the report reinforced that by many measures, the job market is as healthy as it has ever been.The fresh data is good news for the Federal Reserve, for the White House and for Kamala Harris’s campaign as the vice president and Democratic nominee tries to make an economic case to voters ahead of the presidential election in November.It supports the idea that the economy either is headed for or has possibly already achieved a soft landing, in which inflation comes down without spurring economic pain in the process.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump and Harris Want to Revive Manufacturing, but How Much Could They Actually Do?

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    The policy focus on the industry has changed from job quantity to job quality. And while federal incentives matter, local factors are more important.In recent weeks, the presidential candidates have been tussling over a familiar campaign issue in postindustrial America: how to reinvigorate manufacturing.Former President Donald J. Trump has proposed stiff tariffs on nearly all imports as a way of forcing foreign companies to make their goods in the United States, an escalation of a strategy that did not work during his term. “We’re going to take their factories,” Mr. Trump declared recently.Building on the Biden administration’s approach, Vice President Kamala Harris has promised tax credits and more apprenticeships to strengthen factory towns and invest in advanced technologies, ensuring they “are not just invented in America but built here.”In truth, no president can single-handedly control the growth of specific industries. Larger economic forces like recessions and exchange rates tend to play a much more powerful role. But some policies can help or hinder their progress.Over the last four years, policy and macroeconomic factors have combined to begin reshaping the manufacturing industry. While job growth has been flat for the past two years — as interest rates have clamped down on expansion and a strong dollar has dulled exports — shifts in the composition and location of it are underway beneath the surface.But first, a more fundamental question: Why do politicians care so much about manufacturing, anyway?Which manufacturing sectors have been growing fastest?Domestic output of semiconductors and other electrical components has expanded by 30 percent since the beginning of 2020. Other products, not as much.

    Notes: The semiconductor category includes other components. Source: Federal ReserveBy The New York TimesWhere manufacturing jobs have shifted since the pandemicBetween January 2020 and March 2024, the West Coast and Northeast have lost factory employment while many states in the Southeast have gained.

    Source: Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Labor DepartmentBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Boeing to Begin Temporary Layoffs Due to Strike

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    The aerospace giant said it would temporarily lay off tens of thousands of employees to stem losses from a walkout by the machinists’ union.Boeing will start furloughing tens of thousands of employees in the coming days as it seeks to blunt the effects of a strike involving its largest union, the company said on Wednesday.The strike, which began on Friday, has drastically slowed production of commercial airplanes because most of the union’s more than 33,000 members work in manufacturing in the Seattle area. Boeing announced a series of cost-cutting measures this week to stem losses that could reach into the billions of dollars in a prolonged strike.“With production paused across many key programs in the Pacific Northwest, our business faces substantial challenges and it is important that we take difficult steps to preserve cash and ensure that Boeing is able to successfully recover,” the company’s chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, said in a message to employees on Wednesday.Mr. Ortberg joined Boeing last month, part of a management shuffle after a panel blew off one of the company’s planes in flight this year, leading to a crisis for the company. In response, federal regulators limited Boeing’s plane production and the company initiated a series of changes aimed at improving quality and safety.Managers planned to meet with workers on Wednesday to review how the temporary furloughs, which Mr. Ortberg said would affect “a large number of U.S.-based executives, managers and employees,” would play out. He also said that he and other company leaders would take a pay cut for the rest of the strike, though he did not say by how much.Employees will continue to receive benefits. And, for some, the temporary furloughs will be cycled in, with workers taking one week off every four weeks, on a rolling basis. It was not immediately clear which workers would be affected by the furloughs. Engineers, who are represented by a chapter of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, are still required to work during the strike.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    As Federal Reserve Readies Interest Rate Cut, Risks to Job Market Still Loom

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    The Federal Reserve is poised to lower interest rates this week. Recent jobs data have been a reminder that a soft landing is not yet assured.An object in motion stays in motion. Is a labor market trend that’s well underway any different?That’s the question looming for officials at the Federal Reserve as they try to pull off a feat that has never really been accomplished before: gently cooling an economy that was experiencing rip-roaring inflation without tanking the job market in the process.So far, the Fed’s attempt at a soft landing has worked out better than just about anyone, including central bankers themselves, expected. Inflation has cooled significantly, with the Consumer Price Index down to 2.5 percent from a peak of 9.1 percent just two years ago. And even with the Fed’s policy interest rate at its highest level in more than two decades, consumer spending has held up and overall growth has continued to chug along.Fed officials are eager to keep it going. That is why all signals suggest that they will lower interest rates at the conclusion of their meeting on Wednesday — and the only real question is whether they will cut them by a typical quarter of a percentage point or by a half percentage point. They are also likely to forecast that they will lower interest rates further before the end of the year, perhaps predicting that they will cut them by a full point from their current 5.33 percent.But even as the Fed turns an important corner on its fight against inflation, real risks remain. And those center on the labor market.Unemployment has been slowly, but steadily, rising. Wage growth has been consistently slowing. Job openings have come down, and hiring rates have come down along with them. And while all of those developments are what the Fed wanted — the point of this exercise was to slow an overheated job market and prevent it from fueling future inflation — central bankers have been clear that they do not want to see it continue.“We do not seek or welcome further cooling in labor market conditions,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said in his latest speech.Unemployment and Underemployment RiseThe jobless rate historically jumps during recessions.

    Notes: Unemployment is the share of people actively looking for work; underemployment also includes people who are no longer actively looking and those who work part time but would prefer full-time jobs. Seasonally adjusted.Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesWage Growth Is Cooling SteadilyAfter spiking in 2022, wage gains for rank-and-file workers have been coming down.

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    Year-over-year change in average hourly earnings
    Note: Data is for production and nonsupervisory employees and is not seasonally adjusted.Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesJob Openings Fall, Just as More People Look for ThemAfter years in which jobs were much more plentiful than available workers, that ratio is on the cusp of flipping.

    Data are seasonally adjusted.Source: The Bureau of Labor StatistticsBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Why Low Layoff Numbers Don’t Mean the Labor Market Is Strong

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    Past economic cycles show that unemployment starts to tick up ahead of a recession, with wide-scale layoffs coming only later.As job growth has slowed and unemployment has crept up, some economists have pointed to a sign of confidence among employers: They are, for the most part, holding on to their existing workers.Despite headline-grabbing job cuts at a few big companies, overall layoffs remain below their levels during the strong economy before the pandemic. Applications for unemployment benefits, which drifted up in the spring and summer, have recently been falling.But past recessions suggest that layoff data alone should not offer much comfort about the labor market. Historically, job cuts have come only once an economic downturn was well underway.

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    Layoffs per month
    Data is seasonally adjusted.Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesThe Great Recession, for example, officially began at the end of 2007, after the bursting of the housing bubble and the ensuing mortgage crisis. The unemployment rate began rising in early 2008. But it was not until late 2008 — after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the onset of a global financial crisis — that employers began cutting jobs in earnest.The milder recession in 2001 offers an even clearer example. The unemployment rate rose steadily from 4.3 percent in May to 5.7 percent at the end of the year. But apart from a brief spike in the fall, layoffs hardly rose.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    For the Fed, a Sign That the Job Market Is Cooling but Not Cracking

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    Federal Reserve officials are moving toward their first rate cut since the 2020 pandemic downturn as they try to keep the economy from cooling too much. Friday’s fresh jobs data gave them reasons for both comfort and concern.Unemployment eased slightly to 4.2 percent in August, from 4.3 percent in July — a sign that joblessness has not started a relentless march upward, which is welcome news for both American workers and Fed officials. But hiring was weaker than economists had expected, with 142,000 jobs added in August.Altogether, the report suggested that the job market was slowing, but not imploding, more than two years into the Fed’s campaign to slow the economy with higher interest rates. That has kept Fed officials noncommittal and investors guessing about just how much the Fed will cut rates this month.Fed policymakers raised interest rates starting in 2022 to tap the brakes on a hot economy. At the time, hiring was rapid and wage growth robust, and officials worried that a burst of rapid inflation would not fade on its own against that backdrop. They ultimately lifted borrowing costs to a more-than-two-decade high of 5.3 percent, where they remain.But inflation has been cooling notably and wage gains have been steadily moderating, so Fed officials have become increasingly wary of overdoing it. They wanted to return the job market and economy to a sustainable pace, but they do not want to cause either to crash.That is why the Fed is poised to lower interest rates. The question has been whether policymakers will cut rates by a quarter percentage point or a half percentage point at their Sept. 17-18 gathering. That was one reason that Wall Street was intently focused on Friday’s jobs report: If it showed clear cracks in the labor market, investors expected it to prod the Fed toward a bigger rate cut.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More