NPR.
This is the indicator for Planet Money.
I'm Adrienne Ma.
I'm Waylon Wong.
And I'm Darian Woods.
And it is Jobs Friday.
It is the day of the month where we check in on how the economy is working for real people as opposed to not real people.
Cardboard cutouts of people.
It was just Halloween yesterday.
The ghouls, the ghosts.
The ghosts.
Jobs.
We're not counting those.
In keeping with our usual Jobs Friday tradition, we will start with the headline numbers from the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly jobs report.
The report, which came out this morning, shows unemployment in October was at 4.1%, so no change from the month before.
Also, the economy added just 12,000 new jobs.
And the BLS revised its previous estimates for jobs gains in August and September, saying that they were lower by about a combined 112,000.
So that is good news, at least on the surface for Republicans and less good for the Democrats going into the election next week.
I think we can expect this lackluster jobs report to become sort of a political football this week.
That is definitely true, especially considering the positive economic data we've seen recently, inflation cooling, consumer spending and GDP growing.