Veteran Employment Rate Remains Strong Even as Hurricane Fallout Batters Job Growth

The 2.8% jobless rate for veterans in October once again was better than the 4.1% rate for the general population, but the figure that stood out most from the monthly jobs report Friday was the stunning drop in job growth from 223,000 jobs added in September to just 12,000 in October.

"It is likely that payroll employment estimates in some industries were affected by the hurricanes" that devastated the Southeast in October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in the jobs report release while noting that the monthly survey was "not designed to isolate effects from extreme weather events."

The last BLS report before the elections next Tuesday became instant fodder for the presidential campaigns as the two sides presented sharply contrasting views on what the survey meant for the future of the economy.

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In a statement, President Joe Biden sought to portray the flatlining of job growth as a one-off attributable to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and also the ongoing strike at Boeing affecting about 40,000 workers.

"Job growth is expected to rebound in November as our hurricane recovery and rebuilding efforts continue," Biden said, noting that the economy added an average of 184,000 jobs per month over the last year until the October slowdown. He added that Boeing and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers were near an agreement on ending the strike.

In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, the national press secretary for former President Donald Trump, said that "this jobs report is a catastrophe and definitively reveals how badly Kamala Harris broke our economy."

"Working families are being ripped off by the Harris-Biden economic agenda. Kamala broke the economy. President Trump will fix it," Leavitt said.

However, Robert Frick, chief corporate economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union, said the underlying strength of the economy and the labor market would quickly reverse the cratering of job growth reported by the BLS.

"You can't argue with hurricanes," Frick said in a phone interview, but historically "the U.S. economy bounces back very quickly from natural disasters, as opposed to other countries."

"You have to look at the trend" rather than the one-month snapshot on jobs from the BLS report, Frick said, and the trend indicated continued job growth for veterans and the general population.

The BLS report for October showed the veteran unemployment rate at 2.8%, which was up a tick from the 2.7% rate in September. The unemployment rate for the post-9/11 generation of veterans, which tends to fluctuate more than the rate for all veterans, bumped up from 2.5% in September to 3.2% in October, the BLS report said.

There was "nothing remarkable" in the October BLS report that would be of concern for veterans in the job market, said Kevin Rasch, regional director of the Warriors to Work initiative of the Wounded Warrior Project.

In a phone interview, Rasch, a retired Navy commander, said the September jobs report "may have been an anomaly" after months of BLS surveys showing steady job growth. He added that the 3.2% job rate for post-9/11 veterans was "still a positive number."

The Warriors to Work program, which has 25 "career coaches" around the country, placed about 1,300 veterans in jobs in just-concluded fiscal 2024, Rasch said, adding that there was a growing job market for veterans in drone technology. "The drone industry is an emerging one," he said.

Another view on the state of the economy and the jobless rates for veterans came from Will Attig, a former Army sergeant who served two tours in Iraq and now is executive director of the Union Veterans Council at the AFL-CIO.

"From what we're hearing on the road this year, veterans are struggling in the economy," Attig said in a phone interview from Detroit. "These numbers look great" on unemployment rates for veterans in the October BLS jobs report, Attig said, and the "job growth for the last four quarters has been amazing," but many veterans feel that "they just don't have the quality jobs" that they rate.

Related: Veterans Jobless Rate Drops Sharply Amid Unexpected September Hiring Blitz