The October jobs report showed little gain in hiring, with establishments adding just 12,000 jobs. The number was depressed both by the effects of the hurricanes that hit the South last month and the loss of roughly 33,000 jobs due to the strike at Boeing. The economy has now added 15.3 million jobs since President Biden took office in January of 2021. We now have 5.9 million more jobs than at the pre-pandemic peak. (These numbers adjust for the BLS preliminary benchmark revision.)

The unemployment rate remained at 4.1 percent as hiring apparently offset any hurricane-related layoffs. The hurricanes make it more difficult to gauge the underlying strength of the labor market, but the growth would clearly have been far more rapid without the unusual events hitting the economy in October.

It is also worth noting that the response rate to the establishment survey was extraordinarily low at 47.4 percent. It is typically close to 60.0 percent, which suggests there could be large revisions when we get fuller data in the next two months.

The direct impact of the Boeing strike is easy to measure since we know the number of striking workers. (The indirect effect on supplier industries is more difficult.) The hurricanes would have both prevented hiring in some sectors and also led to some layoffs in businesses that were closed due to the storms.

It seems clear construction employment was affected by the hurricanes, as the sector created just 8,000 jobs in October after averaging almost 20,000 jobs a month in the year to September. This weakness was driven largely by a drop of 6,600 jobs in........

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