Introduction

Welcome to Recruiting Realities, where we bring you the latest developments and insights in recruitment. In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into the US jobs report for October 2024, analyzing the unexpectedly low job additions and the various factors that contributed to this month’s unique labor market landscape.

Yazad Dalal: Hi everyone, I’m Yazad Dalal, Chief Growth Officer here at Joveo and welcome to Recruiting Realities where we bring to you the latest developments and insights in recruitment. And today we are speaking again with our in-house labor economist, David Garrett, about the US jobs report for October 2024. Hello David! 

David Garrett: Hey, happy to be here as always. How’s it going?

Yazad Dalal: It’s going awesome. And for our listeners at Joveo, we publish Interactive Insights across all major occupations in the US. You can check that out on our website, joveo.com/interactive-insights 

David, the most recent US jobs report came out for the month of October, last Friday. The US labor market added only 12,000 jobs. I think that’s dramatically below the 113,000 that was projected.

Perhaps not the only prediction that didn’t come true in the past week. Definitely a stark contrast from the quarter million jobs that we saw reported in September. I know healthcare and government employment are continuing to go up, but temporary health and manufacturing are down. The rest of the major sectors are relatively flat. I also saw that Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton caused half a million people to not show up to work specifically due to weather. That’s more than any other period since the government started tracking that statistic – since 1976. So that’s pretty crazy. And I know, of course, the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.1%. So what are we seeing here? What are our main takeaways?

David Garrett: Yeah, I mean, yeah, this report was kind of a mess, wasn’t it? It’s a little hard to tell. You know, I will say I think a lot of economists kind of expected this report to always be very, or at least pretty, volatile since there were two major hurricanes in the US, major strikes with Boeing, I think it was like 33,000 machinists went on strike. There was a fairly short-lived strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association all within the same month. So it’s a lot that can impact the data collection process. Every time major events like this occur, it always has that risk. For example, this month saw a decline in manufacturing jobs by about 46,000 in total.

You know, since the majority of sectors remain fairly stagnant, it definitely makes this report look very weak in terms of the total job additions just because you have so many things dragging the numbers down.

Yazad Dalal: And I think it’s fascinating how just a few very large employers can have an impact on the national rate. And personally, I’m not sure it’s evidence of an overall slowing in manufacturing at all, because I can tell you from the business side here at Joveo, we’re talking to at least two major global manufacturers who are actually expanding their hirings – that’s why they’re talking to us. So how should we interpret this report then? What should our listeners take away?

Given that, as you say, the report was a little messy.

David Garrett: Yeah, I mean, you know, even though the job gains were incredibly low overall or kind of stagnant, you know, it really just makes that data a bit less telling about where things are. And the fact that we did see similar consistency in trends amongst other parts, like the unemployment rate, rise in average hourly earnings, it really means that, you know, kind of like I said, like the distortions, the number of additional jobs are just distortions. It is always kind of crazy to see these massive swings because of only one or two major employers or events, right?

So, you know, this month’s report really doesn’t tell us things that we haven’t already seen in more long-term unemployment trends. You know, like with manufacturing, like you said, like there is a lot of pent-up demand from what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen. You know, consumer confidence even in October actually went up by, I think, 11%, which is the largest since March of 2021. So there is a lot of indicators that there is hope on the horizon and maybe this is, you know, these distortions were just messy.

Yazad Dalal: Well, got it. Thank you very much, David. Thank you to our listeners. Don’t forget to visit us at Joveo.com and we’ll see you again soon.

David Garrett: Take care.

Conclusion

While the October jobs report appeared weak, this episode concludes that the data was largely distorted by unusual events, mostly just some one-off events messing with the numbers. Good news is, underneath all that chaos, things like consumer confidence are actually looking up for the job market’s future! If you want to check out more episodes of Recruiting Realities be sure to check out our reports here!