The final employment statistics released before Tuesday’s election not only soured economists, but revealed an unmistakable Biden-Harris economic trajectory: private sector jobs are slowing, while government work continues to grow grow up

The Bureau of Labor Statistics report on Friday revealed that the US economy added just 12,000 jobs in October, well below the expected gain of 100,000.

While public sector employment continued to hum, manufacturing and service sector jobs fell in a blow to Vice President Kamala Harris’ efforts to sell her economic vision to undecided voters. In addition, the agency reported that it also deducted 100,000 jobs from the previous month’s total.

“This was a very, very bad report,” said economist and former Trump adviser Stephen Moore John Solomon reports podcast.

“When you look at the revisions in previous months, you know, we’ve lost 100,000 jobs. So that’s number one, meaning it includes the jobs created in October minus the jobs they overestimated from the previous months, it’s 100,000 less than we thought,” Moore said. “Secondly, in the private sector, the overall level of employment was 12,000. This is the worst jobs report we’ve had in three and a half years.”

Trump’s campaign immediately capitalized on the news as it invaded battleground states in the final weekend of the 2024 election.

“This jobs report is a disaster and reveals once and for all how badly Kamala Harris has broken our economy,” the campaign wrote in a statement. “In a single month, Kamala’s failed economic agenda wiped out nearly 30,000 private sector jobs and nearly 50,000 manufacturing jobs.

“Working families are being robbed by the Harris-Biden economic agenda. Kamala broke the economy. President Trump will fix it,” he added.

Harris has worked to improve his image on the economy, promising that she can better address the issues voters care about than her opponent. Her surrogates tried to put a positive spin on Friday’s numbers, suggesting it was a temporary blip from the strikes and hurricanes and that overall jobs continued to grow.

Harris herself was more of a matter of fact.

“We have hard work ahead of us, but we know that hard work is good work,” Harris wrote on X. “With your help in November, we will win.”

Steady growth in government employment while other industries lag is a characteristic trend in recent jobs reports from the Biden administration. Financial analysts have previously raised concerns about this pattern of job growth, warning that it could be unsustainable in the long term.

The latest jobs numbers show that the biggest job losses have occurred in the private sector — primarily in manufacturing and other business services — which are offset by strong hiring in the government and health care sectors.

“If you take away the jobs created by the government, then the economy has actually lost jobs,” Moore explained. “So it’s hard to put any positive spin on this report.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the manufacturing sector lost 46,000 in October. General business services saw a slightly larger decline, with 47,000 fewer jobs than in September. Most other private industries other than health care posted net job losses or were found to be unchanged from the previous month, with the exception of construction, which posted a slight but minimal increase.

The bureau noted that pressures from the twin hurricane impacts of Helene and Milton could affect some industries but would have little impact on the overall unemployment rate. Strikes at Boeing may also have fueled the decline in manufacturing jobsconformable Wall Street Journal.

After a stronger than expected jobs report earlier this year, an economist told Fox Business that the role of government jobs in inflating the numbers may be a cause for concern.

“It’s a little disconcerting when you see that job growth is in sectors that aren’t necessarily your productive sectors,” said Jeffrey Roach, economist for LPL Financial.

“You never want to see government be the major driver of employment,” Roach said. “They’re quick to fire, so it can kind of go both ways. You might see this massive rebound in hiring, but once there’s a slow patch, you might see a reversal of that trend.”

The strong hiring trend in the government sector looks set to continue for a second year. In 2023, nearly 25% of all job gains under the Biden administration were for government jobs.

The jobs numbers came on the heels of two other negative economic indicators this week that defied forecasts: higher-than-expected inflation and lower-than-expected GDP growth.

The job numbers have also come in on the heels of an announcement for another metric that has become the focus of both campaigns: inflation.

On Thursday, the government reported that a measure of core inflation rose, posting the biggest increase since April and beating economists’ forecasts.

Inflation remained a major election issue and colored the national conversation about the economy during the Biden administration, which saw the inflation rate climb to a maximum of 9.1% in June 2022up from 1.4% at the end of the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at a slower-than-estimated 3.1 percent pace. The increase, although lower than expected, was driven by strong consumer spending. But the department also cited federal government spending, which rose 9.7 percent, as a driver of the increase.

“We’re growing the economy in the exact areas that we’re not — we want the government to contract because we’re running a $2 trillion deficit,” Moore said. “So we should shed government jobs and we want to add private sector jobs. What we’ve been doing for much of, you know, the Biden presidency is the exact opposite.”

The Harris campaign did not respond to an inquiry seeking comment on the job numbers. The White House said that despite “the devastation caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton and new strike activity” that are dampening job growth, “America’s economy remains strong.”