LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The economy is top of mind for voters. And with just a few days of voting left, the U.S. economy appears to be in pretty good shape. That's the message from several economic reports that came out this week, and we got an update on the job market from the Labor Department just a short time ago. NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now to talk about how it all adds up. Good morning, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: So let's start with the job market. How's it holding up?
HORSLEY: The job market is still solid. Unemployment remains a low 4.1%. Employers added about 1.7 million jobs in the first nine months of this year. Now, today's report shows virtually no job growth in October, but you have to take that with a big grain of salt. For example, manufacturing showed a loss of 46,000 jobs last month. That's almost entirely due to the ongoing machinist strike at Boeing. In addition, Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which made landfall just before this jobs tally was taken, also probably put a sizable dent in the October jobs number. We probably shouldn't make too much of that.
Now, we are seeing a gradual slowdown in the pace of hiring. Job gains for August and September were revised down a bit today, but employers are almost certainly not hitting the brakes as hard as today's headline figure might suggest.
FADEL: And people are still spending a lot of money, right?
HORSLEY: They are. Earlier this week, we got GDP numbers, which showed consumer spending rose at a strong annual pace of 3.7% during the summer and early fall. That kept the overall economy chugging along at a healthy clip. For the most part, that spending's being bankrolled by people's solid wage gains. You know, we've got a record number of people working right now. Wages are going up. Employers aren't having to fight quite as hard to get workers as they were a couple of years ago. So you're not seeing an overheated job market. But economist Sarah House at Wells Fargo says workers are still able to stretch their paychecks a little bit further with each month
SARAH HOUSE: You're still seeing wages and salaries running ahead of inflation. So that's still really beneficial for overall consumer spending growth and keeping it in the black.
HORSLEY: What's also helping is that prices are no longer going up as fast as they had been. Just yesterday, the Commerce Department released its latest inflation snapshot. That's closely watched by the Federal Reserve. You know, the Fed's target for inflation is 2% per year, and prices in September were up 2.1% from a year ago. So we're getting pretty close. Falling gasoline prices have been a big help. If you strip out energy and food prices, core inflation is a little bit higher, but it is gradually coming down.
FADEL: I mean, what you're describing doesn't sound bad, sounds pretty good. And yet when we're out talking to people, a lot of Americans grumble about the economy. Why?
HORSLEY: Yeah. People still feel the sting of those cumulative price hikes over the last several years. You know, high inflation definitely left its mark. This week, consumer confidence did show an uptick, and that's positive. But White House economist Jared Bernstein acknowledges there's a long way to go before people really feel like they're on solid economic footing.
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JARED BERNSTEIN: There are no victory laps here. We know that prices are still too high for families, making our cost-cutting agenda as urgent as ever. And we will continue to fight to lower costs in key areas, including health care, prescription drugs, child care, housing and more.
HORSLEY: The overall economic data is pretty positive, though. Inflation's coming down. Wages are going up, and the economy's is growing at a pretty good pace.
FADEL: NPR's Scott Horsley. Thank you, Scott.
HORSLEY: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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