The unemployment rate for the generation of veterans who served after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks fell by a full percentage point to 2.5% in a September hiring surge that added 254,000 jobs to the nation's payrolls, the Labor Department reported Friday.
For all veterans, the jobless rate also came down significantly from 3.5% in August to 2.7% in September, and the rate for women veterans, which had spiked to 7% in August, fell to 4.3% in September, according to the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Overall, the national employment rate ticked down from 4.2% to 4.1% in another sign of the economy's resilience as the 254,000 jobs added in September blew well past Wall Street's expectations of job gains in the range of 150,000.
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"Employment continued to trend up in food services and drinking places, health care, government, social assistance, and construction," the BLS report said.
The unemployment rate for veterans had been relatively low and stable leading into the early summer, standing at 3% in July, before surging in August. The rate for women veterans tends to be more volatile, according to economists, given the comparatively smaller total number of Americans who fall under that category.
In another sign of the economy's strength, the Labor Department also revised upward its estimate of job growth in July and August by a total of 72,000 jobs for the two months combined, which translated into a new estimate for job growth over the past three months, averaging 186,000 jobs added.
The data collected for the monthly BLS report only covered the period up to mid-September, and would not have accounted for the negative effects on the economy from the devastation to the Southeast from Hurricane Helene or the Boeing machinists strike.
However, leading economists said the BLS report eased concerns that the jobs market was cooling even as the Federal Reserve began to cut interest rates and expressed confidence that inflation rates were coming down.
"This economy is performing very, very well" in comparison to other nations, David Kelly, chief global strategist for J.P. Morgan Asset Management, told CNBC, and "this is not an inflation-prone economy."
With the economy foremost in the minds of voters, former President Donald Trump has been telling his campaign audiences that they are worse off than they were four years ago, but the Biden administration seized on the latest BLS statistics to tout claims that its policies have made it possible to tell Americans that things have improved.
"Four years ago, students were logging into school via Zoom, trick-or-treating was canceled, and we faced unprecedented challenges," acting Labor Secretary Julie Su said in a statement. "Today, as we approach Halloween 2024, our economy is on strong footing with record employment gains, shrinking unemployment gaps, and rising wages."
In a White House statement, President Joe Biden said that "under my Administration, unemployment has been the lowest in 50 years, a record 19 million new businesses have been created, and inflation and interest rates are falling."
The Trump campaign did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The next BLS report will come out on Friday, Nov. 1, four days before the Nov. 5 election.
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