A Miss That Looks Worse the Deeper You Dig
The September jobs report—released October 2 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics—marks the last employment snapshot before November's midterm elections, arriving in the middle of a loud argument about the economy. The topline figure of 29,000 net jobs was already weak by any measure. But the revision buried inside the data made it worse: the three-month average for July through September now sits at roughly 51,000 jobs per month—a pace that would need to triple to match the 150,000-plus monthly gains needed to keep up with labor-force growth.
