By Joshua Arnold

It’s “full steam ahead” for the Trump and Harris campaigns as the 2024 presidential race ends its final weekend. On Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton campaigned for Vice President Kamala Harris at a church in Muskegon Heights, Mich., in one of the seven closest swing states in the 2024 race. In 1992, Clinton cruised to victory over incumbent President George H. W. Bush on the power of a memorable slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.” For Harris, the second-highest official in the incumbent administration, it’s more difficult to make the same pitch.

In fact, the October jobs report, released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), contained only bad news for Harris. Total employment in the U.S. was “essentially unchanged” in October, according to the BLS, adding only 12,000 jobs, compared to “an average monthly gain of 194,000 over the prior 12 months.” This was 101,000 jobs short of economists’ expectations for a gain of 113,000 jobs. Unemployment remained steady at 4.1%.

The total — 12,000 jobs added — includes an increase of 40,000 government jobs, meaning that non-government jobs actually saw a decrease of 28,000.

In the same report, the BLS revised downward their estimates of jobs added in August and September by 112,000. They now estimate 78,000 jobs added in August, instead of 159,000, and 223,000 jobs added in September, instead of 254,000. In August, the BLS made its largest ever revision to the job numbers, reducing the number of jobs it estimates were created from March 2023 to March 2024 by 818,000.

These disappointing figures present a stiff headwind to the Harris campaign just as it seeks to mobilize its final get-out-the-vote operation.

Two outside factors played a temporary role in suppressing October’s job numbers. The BLS estimated that manufacturing jobs were down by 46,000, “largely due to strike activity.” Fox Business notes that “about 33,000 unionized machinists at Boeing have been on strike since early September.”

Additionally, said BLS, “October data … are the first collected since Hurricanes Helene and Milton … caused severe damage in the southeast portion of the country.” The Labor Department estimated that 512,000 people with jobs didn’t work as a result of bad weather. However, any of those workers who were still paid — such as salaried employees — would still be included in the jobs tally.

Whatever the effect or transience of these outside factors, the news couldn’t come at a worse time for the Harris campaign, reckoned The Wall Street Journal. Rightly or wrongly, many voters blame economic problems on the party that controls the White House. While not always decisive, in the last half-century, poor economic conditions contributed to the victories of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Clinton in 1992, Barack Obama in 2008, and Joe Biden in 2020.

Whether the lack of job growth in October is transitory or a sign of things to come, many voters will likely associate the bad news with their pre-existing economic woes.

The Biden-Harris administration also hurts its own case by stumbling in response to crises. They can legitimately claim that they are responsible for neither hurricanes nor labor strikes. But, if the administration claims that, what do voters hear? They recall FEMA’s lack of preparation in response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene. They may remember that the Biden-Harris administration has encouraged labor strikes by often siding with the striking workers. Most recently, President Biden refused to cancel a dockworker strike that would have crippled East Coast Christmas shopping, if the dockworkers had not settled for a raise of only 62%.

In other words, the only way for the Biden-Harris administration to argue that they are not responsible for this particular piece of bad economic news is by reminding voters of their other failures. They may not control the weather, but neither can they dodge this particular headwind.

The disappointing jobs report has surely caught the attention of the Federal Reserve Board, which is scheduled to meet next Wednesday and Thursday. At its previous meeting in September, the Fed voted overwhelmingly to reduce interest rates by half a percentage point, instead of a more modest quarter-point cut.

A narrow majority also signaled their preference for further rate cuts at their November and December meetings — a preference that was surely made stronger by the lack of job growth in October. These engineers on Steamship America suddenly realized that the boiler is almost empty, and it needs more coal shoveled in, fast.

What could complicate the Fed’s decision is that inflation is still not entirely beaten. Core inflation rose by 0.3% in both September and August (the October report will not be published until November 13), and it rose by 3.3% over the last 12 months. All inflation (which includes the volatile categories of food and energy) was lower, rising only 2.4% over a 12-month period, but still higher than the two-percent target rate.

While prices are not rising as fast as they were in the summer of 2022, the cumulative effect of four years of inflation continues to take its toll on families’ pocketbooks. In the steamer analogy, the boiler needs more fuel, but adding more fuel also risks raising the already dangerous inflationary pressure that has built up over time.

Thus, in his Wednesday rally, former president Clinton had to find a different way to sell Harris’s candidacy to voters. In fact, what he said was the following: “I don’t think it’s right to say that people have to vote for Donald Trump because the economy was better then.” To paraphrase Clinton’s new election pitch, voting based on the economy is stupid.

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.