The worst jobs report since the middle of the pandemic just landed with a thud on the doorstep of the White House, threatening to imperil Vice President Kamala Harris’s candidacy in the campaign’s closing days.

The U.S. Labor Department on Friday reported that non-farm payroll jobs grew by just 12,000 positions across the country, a number that, if history is a guide, indicates the U.S. actually lost jobs in October. The anemic jobs growth is the worst performance by the economy since December of 2020, nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and represents a sharp decline from the 223,000 jobs added in September. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal said they anticipated a gain of at least 100,000 new positions. Former President Donald Trump capitalized, drawing attention to an additional 46,000 manufacturing jobs lost during October as well.

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WATCH:

BRUTAL: Just 12,000 jobs were created last month — FAR fewer than the 100,000 jobs economists expected.

46,000 manufacturing jobs were lost last month. pic.twitter.com/rEQzAQkT5G

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) November 1, 2024

Charles Payne of Fox Business was among the first Friday morning to highlight how the Biden-Harris administration’s habit of touting job growth only to revise those numbers lower months later suggests that October probably saw a net loss of jobs, due in part to devastating hurricanes that battered several states along the East Coast. “Jobs Report is a disaster and its disingenuous to assume ‘experts’ that contributed to consensus didn’t factor into their estimates hurricanes and strikes,” he wrote on X. “Moreover, huge negative revisions continue to reveal a much weaker labor market than the media and economists portray.”

Jobs Report is a disaster and its disingenuous to assume "experts" that contributed to consensus didn't factor into their estimates hurricanes and strikes.

Moreover, huge negative revisions continue to reveal a much weaker labor market than the media and economists portray. pic.twitter.com/bf8RKJ6gMa

— Charles V Payne (@cvpayne) November 1, 2024

The news put more wind at Trump’s back, and his campaign was quick to saddle Harris with the poor report. “This jobs report is a catastrophe and definitively reveals how badly Kamala Harris broke our economy,” it said in a statement to the Journal. Other critics have pointed to the Biden-Harris administration’s track record of going back to jobs reports months later only to revise the numbers significantly downward, as they did during the final months of Biden’s ill-fated re-election campaign. President Biden has frequently claimed he’s presided over the most robust period of job growth in American history.

Another factor that Labor Department officials say contributed to the economic malaise was Boeing’s ongoing strike which included 33,000 employees, and much of the 45,000 lost manufacturing jobs “was largely due to strike activity.” The Journal adds that Federal Reserve officials do not appear to be dissuaded by today’s report and intend to continue modest decreases in interest rates when they meet next Thursday. Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, said the U.S. must maintain a monthly jobs growth rate between 100,000 and 150,000 jobs if it is to keep pace with the current unemployment rate. “With the economy continuing to outperform and with the labor supply diminished, there is a real risk the unemployment rate will go down, not up,” he said.

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