The Jobs Report Reveals Federal Reserve Election Interference
By Peter Navarro | RealClearMarkets | October 2, 2026
CNBC and Yahoo Finance called the jobs report a miss. Fox said it was lower than expected. More bad analysis from a Keynesian financial press that has shown extraordinary supply-side ignorance throughout the Trump 47 term.
The deeper story is indeed more complicated — and considerably more reassuring.
Start with the unemployment rate. It rose a tenth not because people lost jobs but because people came looking for them. The labor force participation rate jumped two tenths to 61.8 percent, well above expectations.
Behind the curtain, the share of prime-age Americans holding a job rose three tenths to 80.7 percent; for prime-age men, four tenths to 86.2 percent. When more people enter the labor force than the economy can hire in a single month, the unemployment rate rises. That is not weakness. That is Americans coming off the sidelines.
Now the headline number itself. Wall Street still reads payrolls through a Biden-era lens, when open borders swelled the labor force and the economy had to create well over 100,000 jobs a month just to stand still.
That world is gone. With the border secured and the population aging, the breakeven pace of job creation — the number that holds unemployment steady — has fallen to roughly 40,000 a month by most estimates, and the Dallas Fed puts it near zero. This month’s 29,000 is well within the neighborhood of breakeven.
Now consider the composition: private employers added 46,000 jobs in September while government shed 17,000. Under Biden Wokenomics, government hiring padded the headline month after month. Under Trumpnomics, the private sector carries the load and the public payroll shrinks. That is exactly the right direction.
Then there is the industrial turn, which the headline — and the anti-Trump media — hides every month and which matters most. Manufacturing added 9,000 jobs in September, bringing this year’s gain to roughly 72,000, after the sector lost more than 200,000 jobs in the last two years of the Biden administration.