Expectations heading into this week showed projections of about 150,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in September. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job market fared quite a bit better than that. NBC News reported:
The U.S. added 254,000 jobs in September, far exceeding expectations, while the unemployment rate fell from 4.2% in August to 4.1%. Forecasts were for 150,000 new jobs added last month, compared to a revised 159,000 in August. The unemployment rate was expected to be unchanged from August.”
In addition to the encouraging top-line data, the same Labor Department report showed that wage growth continued to outpace inflation.
This is not the final jobs report before Election Day — that will be released the morning of Nov. 1, five days before voters go to the polls — but the new data will help drive the public conversation about the economy in the race’s final weeks.
The encouraging job numbers also come the week after a surprisingly good report on U.S. economic growth, which led White House National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard to note in a written statement, “We learned this morning that the economy has grown by 3.2% per year during Biden-Harris Administration — even stronger than previously estimated — and better than the first three years of the previous administration.”
As the 2024 election cycle nears its end, Republicans desperately want voters to believe the economy is terrible. Reality, however, keeps getting in the way of GOP talking points.
Let’s also circle back to previous coverage to put the data in perspective. Over the course of the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency — when the Republican said the U.S. economy was the greatest in the history of the planet — the economy created roughly 6.38 million jobs, spanning all of 2017, 2018 and 2019.
According to the latest tally, the U.S. economy has created over 16.5 million jobs since January 2021 — more than double the combined total of Trump’s first three years. (If we include the fourth year of the Republican’s term, the data looks even worse for him.)
For some additional context, consider job growth by year over the past decade, updated to reflect the latest data revisions:
2013: 2.3 million
2014: 3 million
2015: 2.7 million
2016: 2.3 million
2017: 2.1 million
2018: 2.3 million 2019: 1.98 million 2020: -9.3 million 2021: 7.2 million 2022: 4.5 million 2023: 3 million Nine months into 2024: 1.8 million This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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