The media has been touting the direction of the economy and then this morning the economy got punched in the nose.

For the first time since the government-imposed lockdowns of 2020, private jobs declined last month – falling by 28,000, while government jobs kept growing – adding 40,000 for the month and hitting a new record high.

Total nonfarm payrolls grew just 12,000 – but the story is much worse than that because the previous two months were once again revised downward. So the economy actually lost 100,000 jobs – almost all in construction, manufacturing, and business services.

Manufacturing continues taking it on the chin, dropping 46,000 in October. Including the annual benchmark revision–which won’t be incorporated into the monthly data until January’s report (manufacturing has now lost 184,000 jobs since January 2023).

Over the last year, government and the government-dominated healthcare sector have accounted for almost two-thirds of all job growth while professional and business services have now joined manufacturing in showing annual job losses. After health care and government, the next fastest-growing job category is low-paying leisure and hospitality. This isn’t a robust private-sector recovery; it’s downright anemic.

The loss of good-paying manufacturing and service sector jobs and the growth of low-paying ones is also showing up elsewhere in the data with the economy hemorrhaging 1 million full-time jobs over the last year and only adding part-time ones on net. There are now 1.3 million FEWER full-time jobs than in June 2023.