After a tech-led meltdown in the stock market, the October jobs report on Friday morning could bring investors some encouraging news — or add to their misery. The report probably won’t come to the rescue. While the labor market has shown scattered signs of improvement, the number of new jobs being created is among the lowest on record.
The economy likely created 59,000 new jobs last month, after a meager 29,000 increase in September. Don’t Short Yourself offers weekly money tips to help you earn it, stack it and grow it. I would like to receive updates and special offers from Dow Jones and affiliates.
I can unsubscribe at any time. But don’t pay too much attention to the headline number, economists say. It has become more erratic and unreliable since the pandemic, at least on first read.
The preliminary monthly estimate tends to get heavily revised. Instead, focus on the trend. The U.S. has added an average of 66,000 jobs a month in the past six months.
Anything close to that would be seen as OK. Looked at another way, increases of 60,000 might even be pretty good. Fewer people are entering the labor force, so it might only take 50,000 new jobs a month to soak up all the new entrants and keep the unemployment rate low.
Yet such relatively small increases during an economic expansion also represent the weakest job creation in modern times. By contrast, the U.S. added around 150,000 or more new jobs a month during all previous economic expansions since World War II. **Read:**It’s the strangest job market the U.S. has ever seen. The low-hire, low-fire economy turns 3 years old.
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