October Jobs Report: What Shutdown?

The partial government “shutdown” in October had a negligible effect on unemployment. The good news from the delayed Labor Department jobs report is that 204,000 jobs were created last month, and the previous two months were revised upward by 60,000 combined. That means what had been anemic job growth is now merely tepid. So much for the economic disaster the shutdown would supposedly cause.
The bad news is that the headline unemployment rate ticked up a notch to 7.3%, and the greater U-6 measure rose from 13.6% to 13.8%. And NBC reports, “The civilian labor force tumbled by 720,000 and the labor force participation rate fell to [62.8%], its lowest since March 1978.” Many of the jobs created were also in retail, which means part-time with little or no benefits.
GDP growth, on the other hand, offered more good news. The economy grew by 2.8% in the third quarter. Four years after the recession “officially” ended, we're finally seeing marginally respectable growth. Imagine what the recovery could have been without massive government spending and ObamaCare.