Former President Trump panned a jobs report released by the Labor Department on Friday, calling it the “worst jobs report in the history of our country” during a rally in Michigan.
“We have breaking news. It’s actually bad news. It’s only good for one thing, if you happen to be running against the stupid fools that created this news. It’s bad news, bad news for the country, who just announced a little while ago, that brand new jobs report proves decisively that Kamala Harris and crooked Joe have driven our economy off a cliff,” Trump told his supporters in Warren, Mich.
“And if she gets four more years, your family is never going to — you’re never going to recover from these stupid people,” he added.
Labor Department data found that a mere 12,000 jobs were created during the month of October, while the unemployment rate remained stagnant at 4.1 percent, lackluster numbers for the Biden administration just days before Election Day.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics noted the hurricanes that made landfall in the Southeast in recent weeks had impacted the jobs report. The administration has also noted the Boeing strike impacted those figures.
“We know that there were two powerful forces leading to negative and temporary impacts on payroll growth. Those were, of course, the hurricanes that really hit the southeastern United States, wide swaths therein, and the strikes,” Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein said Friday in an interview on CNBC.
“And if you account for those factors, the underlying pace of payroll job growth is still healthy, probably in the 150,000 range. That’s enough to keep the unemployment rate steady.”
At the same time, Commerce Department data released this week has pointed to some strong economic data points, finding that from July to September the country’s gross domestic product rose at a 2.8 percent annual rate.
But that didn’t stop Trump from criticizing the jobs report, calling the 12,000 figure “pitiful,” and claiming “I never heard of 12,000 jobs.”
“And just think, this is not good news for them,” Trump said of the Democrats. “I mean, how would you like to have an election in four days, and you just had the worst jobs report in the history of our country, practically.”
The economy has largely been seen as the top issue facing voters in this presidential election.
