Gloomy jobs report gives Trump last-minute political ammunition to fire at Harris

Four days left until then Election DayFormer President Donald Trump’s campaign quickly took aim at Vice President Kamala Harris over the federal government’s latest unemployment data, which showed only 12,000 jobs were created in October.

jobs created last month were well below estimates (down to 120,000) and the lowest in four years.

The sharp drop was due to the devastation caused by Hurricanes Helen and Milton, the devastating Boeing strike and other labor disputes.

Regardless of the contributing factors, however, these numbers have given the Trump campaign instant ammunition to fire at Harris as the party’s two leading presidential candidates remain locked in a race beyond the margin of error in both national and national polls. seven crucial battleground states. this will likely determine the winner of the White House.

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“HARD,” was the immediate reaction. Trump campaign on social media, promoting clips of jobs reports on cable news and business network morning shows.

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Minutes later, Trump campaign national press secretary Caroline Leavitt said that “this jobs report is a disaster and definitively shows how Kamala Harris broke our economy.”

“The Harris-Biden economic agenda is ripping off working families. Kamala destroyed the economy. President Trump will fix this,” Leavitt said.

Jobs has — so far — been a bright spot for the Biden-Harris administration amid generally dismal public opinion ratings on the economy as the cumulative impact of inflation continues to weigh on many Americans.

President Biden, whom Harris replaced in July at the top of the national Democratic ticket for 2024, emphasized in a statement minutes after the Labor Department’s jobs report that “unemployment remained unchanged at 4.1%.

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In addition, he emphasized that “the devastation caused by Hurricanes Helen and Milton, as well as new strikes, have slowed job growth. Job growth is expected to rebound in November as our hurricane recovery efforts continue.”

Touting the Biden/Harris administration’s progress, the President said: “The American economy remains strong, adding 16 million jobs since I took office, including an average of 180,000 jobs added each month over the past year.” more than a year before the pandemic. We have the lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in 50 years, and our economy has grown more than in any presidential term.”

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Trump once held a significant lead in polls against the vice president when it came to his handling of the economy, but many recent polls have shown the Democratic nominee closing the gap with the GOP standard-bearer on an issue that remains top of the minds of American voters. .

The latest Fox News poll in battleground Michigan, released this week, showed Harris trailing Trump by just two points in his stewardship of the nation’s economy. In Pennsylvania, the biggest prize among key swing states, the former president’s advantage over the vice president on this issue was just four points.

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