The final jobs report before the 2024 presidential election fell short of expectations.

Around 12,000 new jobs were added to the economy last month, says the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Analysts were expecting around 100,000 new jobs to be added. The White House says part of the problem in late September into October was the economic effects leftover from hurricanes Helene, Milton and a few labor strikes.

“This is political spin trying to explain away the bad numbers so you won’t look at the bad numbers,” says Dr. Matt Will, economist with the University of Indianapolis. Dr. Will tells Tony Katz Today the latest jobs report gets worse the deeper you dig.

“We had 428,000 people fewer in the workforce,” Dr. Will explains, “left the workforce. The employment has been going up. Every month, more people employed. This month, 368,000 fewer employed than last month.”

Dr. Will also expanded upon what he calls “problematic” revisions of the August and September jobs reports.

Initially, the August report showed 159,000 new jobs added. The revision shows it was only 78,000.

As for September, the initial new job number was 254,000. The revision lists the updated number at 223,000.

Despite the roller coaster movement of the jobs reports, the market is still holding strong. The Dow, S&P and NASDAQ spent most of the day Friday soaring. Dr. Will says you can thank big tech companies for that movement.

“Amazon released their earnings yesterday. Google had their earnings before,” Dr. Will continues, “earnings from those big, A.I. tech firms are phenomenal. These companies in the A.I. world are still driving the market. It’s impressive, and the market’s up because of that.”