Throughout President Trump’s time in office, he has tweeted dissatisfaction with the media for not covering the stock market and focusing on other issues like Russia. Unfortunately for Trump, the Department of Labor just released its September jobs report and showed that the U.S. lost jobs for the first time in seven years. The bad numbers, however, don’t have much to do with Trump, but the negative coverage will nonetheless annoy him.
While the overall unemployment rate fell and year-over-year wages rose slightly, the economy lost around 33,000 jobs when a modest gain was expected by Wall Street analysts.
According to the data, the hospitality and leisure industries saw heavy losses, partly due to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hitting areas that rely on those industries (the Department of Labor does not include Puerto Rico in these numbers, hence no accounting for Hurricane Maria’s damage). However, the storms are not expected to have a longterm effect on the labor market:
Using Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 as a benchmark, Jim O’Sullivan, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics, said he expected payroll gains to bounce back by the end of the year. “That was pretty much a two-month story at the time,” he said. Payroll gains had averaged 249,000 in the six months before Katrina. After New Orleans found itself underwater, employment gains averaged 76,000 over the next couple of months before rebounding to 341,000 in November 2005.
The Department of Labor also reported that the economy added nearly 40,000 fewer jobs than previously reported over July and August.
(Via New York Times)