Blowout Job Growth Points to ‘Mother of All Soft Landings’

Happy Friday! President Joe Biden surprised the White House press corps today by taking questions in the White House briefing room for the first time since taking office. Biden’s appearance before the news media coincided with two major pieces of positive economic news: an unexpectedly strong September jobs report and a tentative deal to end the East Coast and Gulf port dockworkers’ strike that threatened to hurt consumers. "The past two days, we’ve gotten some very good news about the American economy," the president said.

We’ve got more details.

Blowout Job Growth Points to ‘Mother of All Soft Landings’

In a sign that the U.S. economy is still chugging along nicely, job growth blew past expectations in September as payrolls increased by 254,000, the Labor Department reported Friday.

The unemployment rate dropped a tenth of a percentage point to 4.1%, while workers reported pay increases of 4% over the last year, an improvement from the reading a month earlier. Job growth numbers for the previous two months were also revised higher, with an additional 72,000 jobs added to the tally for July and August.

The gains were broad-based, with construction firms hiring 25,000, restaurants and bars 69,000, healthcare companies 45,000 and government agencies 31,000. Manufacturing, however, shed jobs in September, and employment in the sector is down 50,000 from its peak in January.

The September report goes a long way toward alleviating concerns that the economy has been approaching stall speed over the last few months in the late stages of the recovery from the pandemic and its burst of inflation. The numbers suggest the U.S. economy is instead poised to register a rare combination of successful disinflation and continued growth.

"I actually think we are in the mother of all soft landings," Diane Swonk, the chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG, told The New York Times, referring to the elusive combination. "The labor market is apparently not cooling as rapidly as we thought."

Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, deployed the same metaphor: "It puts another set of wheels under the plane in terms of assuring a soft landing," he said, per The Wall Street Journal.

The results will likely be welcome news at the Federal Reserve, which announced an unusually large interest rate cut of 50 basis points at its most recent meeting amid concerns that the economy could be headed for a recession. Analysts now expect to see smaller cuts at its next meeting and over the rest of the year. The odds of a 25-basis-point cut in November rose to 98% on Friday, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

Biden celebrates: Making his first appearance at the White House press briefing, President Biden touted the day’s good economic news, which also included the resolution of a strike by dockworkers in the eastern half of the country.

"With today’s report, we’ve created 16 million jobs, unemployment remains low, and wages are growing faster than prices," Biden said in his prepared remarks. "Under my administration, unemployment has been the lowest in 50 years, a record 19 million new businesses have been created, and inflation and interest rates are falling."

Not everyone was celebrating, though, as Republican Sen. Marco Rubio accused the White House without evidence that the job numbers were fictitious. "Another fake jobs report out from Biden-Harris government today," he said on social media, citing downward revisions of previous reports.

Asked about Rubio’s comment, Biden rejected the claim as purely political. "If you notice anything MAGA Republicans don’t like, they call fake," he told reporters. "Anything. The job numbers are what the job numbers are, they’re real."

Moody’s chief economy Mark Zandi said the data is consistent with a host of other positive economic signals he has seen. "The jobs report for September cements my view that the economy is about as good as it gets," he wrote on social media. "The economy is creating lots of jobs across many industries, consistent with robust labor force growth, and thus low and stable unemployment. The economy is at full-employment, no more and no less. Wage growth is strong, and given big productivity gains, it is consistent with low and stable inflation. One couldn’t paint a prettier picture of the job market and broader economy."

White House Slams Trump’s Lies on Hurricane Relief Funding

During a visit to Georgia on Friday, former President Donald Trump criticized the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene and again leveled false accusations that disaster relief funding had been diverted to support migrants illegally in the United States.

"It’s been a terrible response from the White House," Trump told reporters at an event in Evans, Georgia. "A lot of the money that was supposed to go to Georgia, and supposed to go to North Carolina and all of the others is going and has gone already — it’s been gone — for people that came into the country illegally."

Trump has repeatedly politicized — and lied about — the hurricane and relief efforts, criticizing the Biden administration’s efforts even as state and local officials have praised the federal response.

Before Trump’s latest comments, the White House vigorously refuted his criticisms without referring to him by name. In a memo, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said that some Republican leaders are "peddling bald-faced lies." He said the claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is out of money for hurricane response because of an existing program for cities and towns sheltering migrants is false. "No disaster relief funding at all was used to support migrant housing and services," he wrote. "None. At. All."

Bates added that FEMA has the funding it needs for immediate hurricane response and warned about the dangers of propagating such falsehoods, saying they could prevent victims of the storm from seeking assistance. "It is paramount that every leader, whatever their political beliefs, stops spreading this poison," he wrote.

The Biden administration says that more than $45 million has already been provided for Hurricane Helene survivors and that FEMA has shipped more than 11.5 million meals, more than 12.6 million liters of water, 150 generators and more than 400,000 tarps to the affected areas.

Budget expert Brian Riedl of the conservative Manhattan Institute called claims that FEMA has no money left for hurricane response after spending $640 million on migrants "simply false." He explained: "Not only are natural disasters addressed in a separate emergency fund, but catastrophic hurricane aid always comes from Congress passing emergency aid bills as large as $80 billion. The $640M spent on migrants is unrelated budget dust. They aren't related."

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler awarded Trump "Four Pinocchios" for the funding claim, the most severe rating. "Trump is completely wrong," Kessler wrote. "Even though Trump was once president, he still appears to have little clue about the appropriations process. What’s even richer is that when he was president, he did exactly what he claims Biden did — take money from FEMA’s disaster fund to fund migrant programs at the southern border."

Politico reports that Trump has a history of being blatantly partisan in response to disasters — "and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states."

Mark Harvey, who served as Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, told Politico’s E&E News that Trump initially balked at providing wildfire assistance for California and changed his mind only after being shown voter data that made clear that Orange County, California, was home to many of his supporters.

Biden Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Blocked Again

Just hours after a federal judge in Georgia allowed an injunction against President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan to expire, clearing the way for it to move ahead, a judge in Missouri blocked the plan again.

In a victory for the six Republican-led states that are suing to halt Biden’s plan, U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, issued a preliminary injunction. Schelp ruled that courts need to decide whether the plan, which would provide debt relief to more than 25 million Americans at an estimated cost of $75 billion or more, is legal.

"Allowing Defendants to eliminate the student loan debt at issue here would prevent this Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court from reviewing this matter on the backend, allowing Defendants’ actions to evade review," the judge wrote.

In a statement, the Department of Education Department expressed disappointment with the ruling. "We will continue to vigorously defend these proposals in court. We will not stop fighting to fix the broken student loan system and provide support and relief to borrowers across the country," the department said, per Reuters.

Fiscal News Roundup

Views and Analysis

• No, Biden Didn’t Take FEMA Relief Money to Use on Migrants — but Trump Did – Glenn Kessler, Washington Post
• Why Trump Is Lying About Disaster Relief – Paul Krugman, New York Times
• Jobs Report Adds to Economic Momentum for Harris – Jim Tankersley, New York Times
• The Jobs Report Is Good News for the Fed – Jeanna Smialek, New York Times
• Why A Second Trump Term Might Go Full Social Darwinist – Jonathan Chait, New York
• JD Vance’s Family Politics Are Incoherent – Monica Hesse, Washington Post
• Inside a Trump Ad Saying Harris Will Raise Taxes and He Will Cut Them – Jonathan Swan, New York Times
• The Disappearing Bidens: A Quiet End to a Presidency – Alex Thompson and Neal Rothschild, Axios