Strong jobs report, port strike deal bolster Harris

A much better-than-expected jobs report released just hours after the quick suspension of a longshoreman’s strike is giving a boost and some relief to Vice President Harris’s campaign.  

The port strike had threatened to bottle up the economy and was the most politically threatening of a trio of recent challenges faced by Harris and the White House.  

The White House made an intense push to end the strike quickly, putting heavy pressure on both the International Longshoreman’s Association (ILA) and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) to come to the table in the days before and after dockworkers walked off the job. 

The strike, which shut down most activity at East and Gulf Coast ports after the two sides failed to reach an agreement by Monday at midnight, threatened to upend the economy just one month out from the election.  

However, the longshoreman’s union and the coalition of companies operating at eastern U.S. ports reached a tentative agreement Thursday night to end the strike after two days.  

The cherry on top for Democrats was Friday’s jobs report, which showed the labor market remained strong despite fears this summer about weakening. 

The U.S. added an impressive 254,000 jobs in September, well above the 140,000 anticipated by economists. Upward revisions for July and August, which showed an additional 72,000 jobs added across the two months, also indicated that earlier signs of weakening weren’t as pronounced as they first appeared. 

The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1 percent last month, similarly easing previous concerns about rising joblessness.  

The strong jobs report comes as inflation inches closer to the Federal Reserve’s target. After peaking at a 40-year high of 9.1 percent in June 2022, inflation has eased significantly, falling to 2.5 percent as of this August. 

Friday’s job numbers also showed wage growth well outpacing inflation, with average hourly earnings up 4 percent over the past year. 

The central bank, which raised interest rates to a two-decade high in the face of rising prices, signaled an end to its war on inflation last month as it began reducing rates for the first time with a 50-basis-point cut. 

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, offered a glowing assessment of the economy. 

“The jobs report for September cements my view that the economy is about as good as it gets,” Zandi wrote on the social platform X. “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,” he continued. “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.” 

President Biden made his first appearance in the White House press briefing room since taking office to tout the latest jobs data and the quick resolution to the strike.  

“The past two days, we’ve gotten some very good news about the American economy,” Biden said Friday.  

“Just yesterday, shipping carriers, after some discussion with International Longshoremen’s union, came to an agreement to keep the ports of the East Coast and the Gulf ports open,” he continued. “We averted what could have become a major crisis for the country.” 

“Today, I got more incredible news,” the president added, pointing to the September jobs report. 

Both the end of the port strike and the strong jobs report are “good news for the economy” and, as a result, good for Harris, said Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab and former chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

“Harris is not literally running for reelection, but she is coming out of an incumbent administration, so she is being judged on the state of the current economy,” Tedeschi told The Hill. “Anything that is good about the current economy probably helps her, whether fairly or unfairly.” 

The vice president, who has trailed behind former President Trump on the economy since entering the race in late July, has gained some ground on her Republican opponent over the past two months. 

Harris trailed Trump by just 4 points on the question of which candidate would be better at handling the economy in a Marist poll conducted in September. In the same poll conducted in June, Biden trailed Trump by 9 points. 

She similarly made gains on Biden’s numbers on the economy in a Fox News poll conducted last month, trailing Trump by just 5 points compared to Biden’s 15-point gap with the former president in March. 

However, Harris remains behind Trump on the key issue in a particularly tight election. The Hill-Decision Desk HQ polling average currently shows the vice president leading the former president by a slim 3.4 percent. 

A long port strike would have made this situation much more challenging for Harris. Experts estimated the work stoppage could cost the economy up to $5 billion per day and would begin to cause disruptions for consumers if it stretched on for several weeks. 

“A port strike carried with it a lot of risk of inflation going forward, especially short-run inflation, very similar to the inflation that we saw over the pandemic,” Tedeschi noted. “We saw a lot of supply chain bottleneck inflation during the pandemic, and this was a callback to that unpleasant experience.”  

Under the tentative deal reached Thursday, dockworkers would see their wages rise 62 percent over the course of a six-year contract. The two sides also agreed to extend their current contract until Jan. 15 to “return to the bargaining table to negotiate all other outstanding issues.” 

Signs of weakening in the labor market this summer could also have spelled trouble for Harris and the rest of the Biden administration. 

When the July jobs report came in weaker than expected, concerns emerged about whether the Fed had waited too long to cut interest rates and was risking a recession. 

The central bank opted for a larger rate cut at its September meeting, but Fed Chair Jerome Powell stood behind its decision to hold rates steady as long it did — a move that appears to be validated by the latest numbers. 

However, the Trump campaign used Friday’s job numbers to target Harris on manufacturing, immigration and the lasting impacts of inflation. 

“Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have built back broke, losing 34,000 manufacturing jobs in just the past two months as foreign countries benefit from Harris’ weak economic policies,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. 

Leavitt also argued that the administration’s “open border policies” have “destroyed” 825,000 jobs for native-born Americans over the past year while adding 1.2 million jobs for foreign-born workers during the same period. 

However, this trend largely reflects a rush of U.S.-born baby boomers retiring from the job market.

Several economists, including Tedeschi, noted on X that the percentage of native-born Americans with jobs is at the highest level since the federal government began tracking the data.