Call it the “Trump bump.”
Just one month after one of the worst jobs reports in years — right ahead of the Nov. 5 elections — the Labor Department announced Friday that over 227,000 jobs were added in November, according to Fox Business.
This exceeded the expectation made by London School of Economics Group economists. A Reuters survey of economists showed that the range of expected jobs was somewhere between 155,000 and 275,000 jobs.
Either way, this was over 630 percent more than the 36,000 jobs added in October, something that likely hobbled the Biden-Harris administration heading into the final days of the election.
And keep in mind, that’s the revised figure: The original figure of jobs added was an even more anemic 12,000 before being revised upward.
Now, let’s be clear: This isn’t just a “Trump bump” from Donald Trump’s Nov. 5 election win. Even though October’s numbers were disastrous, they were always predicted to be low, thanks to several major storms and labor actions, including 33,000 machinists at Boeing going on strike.
Nevertheless, the numbers in November looked strong indeed.
“Health care added 53,600 jobs in November, in line with the sector’s average monthly gain of 59,000 over the prior 12 months. Within the sector, ambulatory health care services added 22,400 jobs, including 16,000 jobs in home health care services, while employment also rose in hospitals (+19,300) and nursing and residential care facilities (+11,900),” Fox Business reported.
“Leisure and hospitality employment rose by 53,000 jobs in November after it was little changed from the prior month. That figure is above the average of 21,000 jobs added per month in the sector over the last 12 months, with most of the gain occurring at food services and drinking places (+28,900).”
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And while government employment also rose, this was mostly at the state level, with 20,000 of the 33,000 government jobs added there.
Furthermore, average hourly earnings for all non-farm private employees rose 13 cents, or 0.4 percent.
This also comes amid talk of a Federal Reserve rate cut, which the market expects to be 25 basis points after the release of the November jobs report.
“The economy continues to produce a healthy amount of job and income gains, but a further increase in the unemployment rate tempers some of the shine in the labor market and gives the Fed what it needs to cut rates in December,” said Ellen Zentner, a chief economic strategist for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.
Of course, there were Wall Street calls to look at this holistically with the October data and ascribe it to current policies.
“We do not think that a surge in November job gains implies a sudden resurgence in hiring, but only the normalization from temporary shocks in the data,” said Oscar Munoz, a chief U.S. macroeconomic strategist at TD Securities.
“It would be more unbiased to analyze the recent payrolls performance by looking at the October-November data together.”
“Given all of the noise in the labor market data over the past few months, Fed officials are not likely to view the last two months’ readings at face value,” added Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander U.S. Capital Markets. “A number of policymakers have spoken over the past few weeks, and there is near unanimity that the labor market is cooling but healthy.”
However, the fact remains that the jobs numbers beat expectations — and the one driving factor in the economy in November aside from the absence of two hurricanes or major strikes is what party won the U.S. elections. Not only won, in fact, but won decisively.
Even if Joe Biden or his administration couldn’t control all of the negative events of October, the incredible growth in November doesn’t lie. And hopefully, the best is yet to come.
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