In the final comprehensive snapshot of the national labor market heading into next week’s presidential election, the economy added a much smaller-than-expected number of jobs in October.

Last month, there were just 12,000 new jobs, below the consensus estimate of 113,000. This represented the smallest monthly employment gain since December 2020. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1 percent. The White House noted this week that the October jobs report would be affected by devastating hurricanes Helene and Milton and labor action.

Bryon Anderson, head of fixed income at Laffer Tengler Investments, said: “As we thought, this jobs report was going to have a lot of noise around any signal… With two hurricanes and a Boeing strike, the likelihood of this report being clean was going to be hard.” FULL STORY

The Trump and Harris presidential campaigns were battling on Friday morning over remarks made by former President Donald Trump in a recent interview, where he described former Congresswoman Liz Cheney as a war hawk.

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it,” the Republican presidential nominee said. “You know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they are all war hawks when they are sitting in Washington in a nice building.”

The Harris campaign also seized on the Trump comment by claiming that the former president wanted to send Cheney “to the firing squad.” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said media outlets and the Harris campaign have taken Trump’s words out of context. The former president was “clearly explaining“ that people like Liz Cheney “are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves,” Leavitt said. FULL STORY

Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed on Oct. 31 that the United States has communicated with China about curbing North Korea’s involvement in the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war. Blinken noted that China is a member of the United Nations Security Council and is expected to demand that North Korea and Russia cease provocative military action in violation of U.N. resolutions. “So we’ll see if they take action,” he said of China.

Beijing has not yet shown signs of action. Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in a statement that Beijing supports “peace talks and political settlement of the Ukraine crisis.”

The Chinese communist regime has refused to condemn Russia’s war actions and continues to support Moscow through financial and technological means… FULL STORY

How did you enjoy today's Morning Brief? Tell us what you think here.