For months, the economy has been like a jigsaw with one mismatched piece: Consumer spending has been holding up and overall growth has been solid, but the job market has looked treacherously wobbly.
As of Friday, the last piece of that puzzle is finally clicking into place.
Fresh employment data for September showed that hiring picked up strongly, the unemployment rate dipped and wage growth came in strong — adding to a string of recent data pointing to economic resilience.
And the incoming evidence points to a clear conclusion: The economy is robust.
Data revisions released last week showed that growth has been stronger and incomes have been more solid than previously understood. Retail sales data are holding up. And now, employers appear to be meeting resilient consumer demand by continuing to expand their work forces.
In fact, the report reinforced that by many measures, the job market is as healthy as it has ever been.
The fresh data is good news for the Federal Reserve, for the White House and for Kamala Harris’s campaign as the vice president and Democratic nominee tries to make an economic case to voters ahead of the presidential election in November.
It supports the idea that the economy either is headed for or has possibly already achieved a soft landing, in which inflation comes down without spurring economic pain in the process.
“Inflation has been quelled, and the economy’s fine — that’s a soft landing,” said Neil Dutta, head of economics at Renaissance…
