The 2.8 percent unemployment rate for veterans in October was again better than the 4.1 percent rate for the general population, but the number that stood out most from Friday’s monthly jobs report was the stunning drop in job growth from 223,000 jobs added in September to just 12,000 in October.

“Wage employment estimates in some industries are likely to have been affected by the hurricanes” that ravaged the Southeast in October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in the jobs report, while noting that the monthly survey “it was not designed to isolate effects from extreme effects.” weather events.”

The last BLS report before next Tuesday’s election became instant fodder for the presidential campaigns as the two sides offered starkly contrasting views on what the survey meant for the future of the economy.

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In a statement, President Joe Biden tried to portray the slowdown in job growth as a one-off attributed to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, as well as the ongoing strike at Boeing, which is affecting about 40,000 workers.

“Job growth is expected to rebound in November as our recovery and rebuilding efforts from the hurricane continue,” Biden said, noting that the economy added an average of 184,000 jobs per month over the past year to to the slowing down of October. He added that Boeing and the International Association of Machinists and Aeronautical Workers are close to an agreement on ending the strike.

In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, former President Donald Trump’s national press secretary, said that “this jobs report is a catastrophe and definitively reveals how badly Kamala Harris has broken our economy.”

“Working families are being ripped off by the Harris-Biden economic agenda. Kamala broke the economy. President Trump will fix it,” Leavitt said.

However, Robert Frick, chief corporate economist for MARINE Federal Credit Union, said the underlying strength of the economy and labor market will quickly reverse the acceleration in job growth reported by the BLS.

“You can’t argue with hurricanes,” Frick said in a phone interview, but historically “the U.S. economy bounces back very quickly from natural disasters, unlike other countries.”

“You have to look at the trend,” rather than the one-month snapshot of jobs in the BLS report, Frick said, and the trend pointed to continued job growth for veterans and the general population.

The BLS report for October showed the unemployment rate for veterans at 2.8 percent, up one tick from September’s 2.7 percent rate. The unemployment rate for the post-9/11 generation of veterans, which tends to fluctuate more than the rate for all veterans, rose from 2.5 percent in September to 3.2 percent in October, the BLS report said.

There was “nothing of note” in the October BLS report that would be of concern to veterans in the labor market, said Kevin Rasch, regional director of the Wounded Warrior Project’s Warriors to Work initiative.

In a telephone interview, Rasch, a retired Navy commander, said the September jobs report “may have been an anomaly” after months of BLS surveys showing steady job growth. He added that the 3.2 percent employment rate for post-9/11 veterans is “still a positive number.”

The Warriors to Work program, which has 25 “career coaches” across the country, placed about 1,300 veterans in jobs in the just-completed fiscal year 2024, Rasch said, adding that there is a growing job market for veterans from drone technology. “The drone industry is an emerging one,” he said.

Another take on the state of the economy and unemployment rates for veterans came from Will Attig, a former Army sergeant who served two tours in Iraq and is now executive director of the Union Veterans Council at the AFL-CIO.

“From what we’re hearing on the road this year, veterans are struggling in the economy,” Attig said in a phone interview from Detroit. “These numbers look great” for unemployment rates for veterans in the October BLS report, Attig said, and “job growth over the last four quarters has been amazing,” but many veterans feel they “just don’t have the quality of jobs” that they evaluate.

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