Opinion | Three key ways to think about the jobs report
Washington PostNov 04, 2022
Exceeding the approximate 200k jobs predicted by economists, the US Labor Dept. on Friday announced that the US economy added 261k jobs in October, though the unemployment rate jumped from 3.5% in September to 3.7% last month.
The average monthly growth rate of 289k over the last three months is lower than the average of 539k during the same period the previous year but higher than the pre-pandemic average of 164k per month in 2019.
Though it may seem counterintuitive, the slowdown in job growth from last year — while the market remains strong — means the Fed's interest rates are working. Though the economic recovery is slow, it's heading in the right direction under Biden's leadership, and Republicans don't seem to have any plausible alternatives if they were to win the midterms.
While this report may seem optimistic on the surface, the reality is far from this: slowing job growth, combined with record inflation and rising unemployment, signals that a Biden-induced recession is on the horizon. The so-called "positives" of this job report won't be enough to carry Democrats through the final stretch of the campaign trail.
There's a 73% chance that the US will enter a recession by January 2024, according to the Metaculus prediction community.