Expectations heading into this morning showed projections of about 170,000 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 far exceeded those projections. CNBC reported:
Job growth was stronger than expected in September, a sign that the U.S. economy is hanging tough despite higher interest rates, labor strife and dysfunction in Washington. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 336,000 for the month, better than the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 170,000, the Labor Department said Friday in a much-anticipated report.
The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.8%.
As for overall job growth, with revisions from July and August factored in, we’ve now seen roughly 2.34 million jobs created so far this year — and that’s after just nine months, not the entire calendar year.
As for the politics, let’s 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 United States’ economy was the greatest in the history of the planet — the economy created roughly 6.35 million jobs, spanning all of 2017, 2018 and 2019.
According to the latest tally, the U.S. economy has created roughly 14.4 million jobs since January 2021 — more than double the combined total of Trump’s first three years.
In recent months, Republicans have responded to developments like these by pretending not to notice them. GOP officials kept the trend going last week.
For some additional context, consider job growth by year over the past decade:
2013: 2.3 million
2014: 3 million
2015: 2.7 million
2016: 2.3 million
2017: 2.1 million
2018: 2.3 million
2019: 2 million
2020: -9.3 million
2021: 7.3 million
2022: 4.8 million
2023 (so far): 2.3 million
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
