Employment Research Brief

Discrepancies cloud employment data. October’s atypically low job creation total of 12,000 is largely the result of sector hiring offsets and disruptions from recent events. Education, health services and public service organizations added a combined 97,000 personnel last month, consistent with trends seen thus far this year. Over 60 percent of the positions added in this span were from one of these less cyclical industries. Countering these gains were the loss of 47,000 professional and business services roles and 46,000 manufacturing jobs, with the majority of the latter stemming from the strike at Boeing. It is also likely Hurricanes Helene and Milton impacted both hiring and labor market data collection last month. Prior to October’s abnormalities, however, employment trends already showed signs of cooling, with the number of job openings falling to a nearly four-year low of 7.4 million in September. Softening labor demand would be concerning if other economic indicators were less positive, which is not the case.