November 1, 2019

The job growth for October was depressed by the United Auto Workers strike at General Motors. This reduced manufacturing employment by more than 40,000. This drop will be reversed in November, but it pushed manufacturing employment’s share of total employment down to 8.4 percent, the lowest on record. In looking at the October job growth data, it is also important to note sharp upward revisions to the prior two months’ data, bringing the three-month average to 176,000. For more, see the latest Jobs Byte.