Campaigns Go West, Job Numbers and the Election, Union Canvassing Push
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Hi, it's Layla Faldin. And I'm Ian Martinez. Now, before we get to the show, I mean, it has been a wild, exhausting election season. And if you need a quick primer on what's going on every day, we get into the top three stories of the day every day.

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first host. That's you and me, Layla, in addition to Steve and Michelle. I know, and we never get to all be together, but in the closing days of the election, we all did sit down to talk about our biggest takeaways from the voters we spoke with in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada. And we're going to talk about

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The Trump and Harris campaigns are making a final push to voters in Western states before the election. They're taking very different approaches. Can they tip the scale in these final days? I'm Amy Martinez, that's Leila Fadal, and this is Up First from NPR News.

The economy is once again a top issue for Americans this election cycle. And this time around, the news is trending positive. You're still seeing wages and salaries running ahead of inflation. What gaps remain in healing the economy after a long period of price hikes and housing shortages? And labor unions are deploying tens of thousands of canvassers in swing states this weekend. What's at stake? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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The presidential campaigns headed west yesterday. Yeah, both candidates held rallies in Arizona and Nevada. With just days until Election Day, Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump are working to motivate voters to get to the ballot box. And they're doing it in very different ways. And we are seeing your White House correspondent Tamara Keith joins us now from Las Vegas. Hi, Tam. Good morning. So what stands out from Trump's day on the trail? Late.

Late last night, it was the last event of the day, and it was this very long onstage conversation with Tucker Carlson, formerly of Fox News.

Carlson asked Trump about Liz Cheney campaigning for Vice President Harris. And Trump said that he'd never gotten along with her because she was a war hawk. And then he used violent imagery to make his point. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.

You know, they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh, gee, well, let's send let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy. Harris's campaign immediately highlighted this inflammatory language about one of Trump's many enemies. But Trump's campaign suggests that it shouldn't be a big deal with all the context, some of which the Harris campaign didn't push out. But.

But is it going to be a big deal? Probably. We've seen Harris almost every day this week jump on things that Trump or his allies have said to drive her closing argument that he's just not fit for office. Did everyone hear what he just said yesterday? This was her in Phoenix yesterday. Wednesday night, Trump had said that he would protect women, quote, whether the women like it or not.

And Harris built that into her stump speech right away. He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what's in their own best interest and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women. We trust women.

OK, so Harris has been highlighting Trump's own language and using it against him. Did she bring up last Sunday's Madison Square Garden rally where speakers used bigoted and racist rhetoric? This campaign has been on the topic of garbage ever since an opening act at Trump's big rally referred to Puerto Rico as a, quote, floating island of garbage. Trump's big rally is a big one.

Trump has distanced himself from that comedian. But last night, this was front and center at Harris's rally in Las Vegas, where she was introduced by Jennifer Lopez, who is Puerto Rican. She said it wasn't just Puerto Ricans who were offended that day. It was every Latino in this country. And she urged Latinos to get out and vote for Harris. But, you know, Trump is still working to win Latino voters, too, and his campaign believes that he's made real inroads.

Trump is also trying to take back the garbage narrative after earlier this week, President Biden appeared to say Trump supporters are garbage before clarifying that he was talking about the comedian's bad joke. And there's a new twist in this story. Catch us up. Indeed. So as soon as Biden made that comment, the White House jumped into action and tried to

clean it up. They released a transcript with punctuation, an apostrophe, to show what they say was Biden's real meaning. Now, the Associated Press is reporting that White House staff actually altered that transcript, a document that is normally handled by career stenographers who are not political staffers. NPR has not verified this reporting, but now House Republicans are demanding records about this. And

Trump has been talking about Biden's garbage comment nonstop on the trail, and that is all about motivating his base. As NPR's Tamara Keith in Las Vegas. Thank you, Tam. You're welcome. Thank you.

The economy is top of mind for voters. And with just a few days of voting left, the U.S. economy appears to be in good shape. That's the message from several economic reports that came out this week. NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now to talk about how it all adds up. Good morning, Scott. Good morning, Linda. So let's start with the job market. How is it holding up? The job market's very solid. Unemployment is a low 4.1%. Employers added 1.8 million jobs in the first nine months of the year.

Now today's report is expected to show much slower job growth in October, but you do have to take that with a grain of salt. We know the ongoing strike at Boeing has idled more than 30,000 workers. There are some other smaller strikes going on around the country as well. And then you also have some temporary fallout from hurricanes Helene and Milton, both of which made landfall just shortly before the latest jobs tally was taken. So all of that is expected to put a big dent in the October jobs number.

Don't make too much of that. Most analysts think we are seeing a gradual slowdown in the pace of hiring, but employers are probably not hitting the brakes as hard as today's headline numbers might suggest. And people are still spending a lot of money, right?

Yeah, they are. Earlier this week, we got GDP numbers which show consumer spending rose at a strong annual pace of 3.7% during the summer and early fall. That kept the overall economy chugging along at a pretty good clip. For the most part, that spending is being bankrolled by people's solid wage gains. We've got a record number of people working right now. Wages are going up. Employers are not having to fight quite as hard to get workers as they did a couple of years ago.

So you're not seeing an overheated job market, but economist Sarah House of Wells Fargo says workers are still able to stretch their paychecks a little bit further every month. You're still seeing wages and salaries running ahead of inflation. So that's still really beneficial for overall consumer spending growth and keeping it in the black. What's also helping is that prices aren't going up nearly as fast as they had been last

Yesterday, the Commerce Department released its latest inflation snapshot, which is closely followed by the Federal Reserve. The Fed's target for inflation is 2%, and prices in September were up 2.1% from a year ago. So we're getting pretty close.

Fall in gasoline prices have been a big help. If you strip out energy and food prices, core inflation is a little bit higher, but it is gradually coming down. Okay, Scott, everything you're saying sounds like pretty good news, but when you're out there talking to Americans, they're still saying they're struggling, they're grumbling about the economy. Why? Yeah, people still feel the sting of the cumulative price hikes over the last several years. You know, that period of high inflation has definitely left its mark.

We do continue to see signs of healing, though. This week, consumer confidence showed its biggest improvement in more than three and a half years. That's positive. But White House economist Jared Bernstein acknowledges there's still a long ways to go before people really feel like they're on solid economic footing. There are no victory laps here.

Yeah.

Housing is a particular sore spot. We saw mortgage rates inch up again this week. There's just a big shortage of housing in the country, and that's going to take a long time to address. In terms of the data we saw this week, though, in the run-up to Tuesday's election, most of it's pretty positive. Inflation's down, wages are up, and the economy's growing at a healthy pace. NPR's Scott Horsley. Thank you, Scott. You're welcome.

Labor unions have a lot at stake in this election. And they're pouring a record amount of resources into turning out the vote. Tens of thousands of union canvassers will be knocking on doors in swing states this weekend. NPR's Andrea Hsu has been following all of this. So, Andrea, what is at stake for labor?

Well, so much A. Labor unions have really enjoyed the last four years. The Biden-Harris administration has done a lot for unions, standing with members on the picket lines, creating more union jobs, expanding who gets paid overtime. And they really see Donald Trump as a threat here.

He enacted policies that decimated federal employee unions when he was president. He supports right-to-work laws. But the unions know that Trump has a lot of support among white working-class voters, including union members. So the canvassers are highlighting comments Trump has made in recent months, joking with Elon Musk about firing striking workers, reminiscing about how he hated to pay overtime. You know, this race really has unions fired up and fighting for their future.

Yeah, I saw a lot of that in Nevada. The Culinary Workers Union in Nevada is working very, very hard getting people to try and get out the vote. So what does their ground game look like typically? Well, yeah, like you say, nearly every labor union has people phone banking, knocking on doors. The AFL-CIO says it's their largest mobilization in history. They've made contact with more than 7 million voters, either over the phone or at people's doors or work sites.

And this weekend, the AFL says they're going to have 20,000 canvassers out in swing states continuing to knock on doors through 8 p.m. on Election Day itself when polls close. Now, are there people out there who are still maybe persuadable at this point? I know it's late in the game, but I don't know. Are there?

Probably not, or not that many anyway. Even last week when I was in Pennsylvania, the goal had shifted from what they call the persuasion phase to making sure people are going to vote. Canvassers are asking people, how are you going to vote? Do you have a plan to vote? I trailed along with one of these canvassers, Ronell Martinez. He was hired by the hospitality union Unite Here as part of their outreach to Black and Latino voters in and around Philadelphia, those that the union had identified as least likely to vote.

And Martinez is not shy about sharing his own personal story, you know, growing up poor in Puerto Rico, being raised by a strong single mom. She's my inspiration in the life. And that helps him connect with voters like Josephine Villalongo. She's also from Puerto Rico, and it turns out a big Harris fan. Mujeres al poder. The woman power.

You know, the unions think it's this kind of connection that can help turn out the vote. But do the unions think that this intense canvassing operation is actually working? Well, past research has found that just asking people if they intend to vote increases the probability that they will vote. And the United Auto Workers Union has some interesting polling on this. In mid-October, they commissioned a poll of 800 of their own members in swing states.

And members who said they had heard from their union about the election, whether through a phone bank or Canvas, among those members, Harris had a 29-point lead. But then among UAW members who said they hadn't heard from their union, Harris's lead was only six points.

You know, of course, polls are imperfect, as we know from past elections. But still, the unions are confident that this outreach and the information they've provided is making a difference. That's NPR's Andrea Hsu. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you.

And that's a first for Friday, November 1st. I'm Layla Faldin. And I'm A. Martinez. For your next listen, we'll have a bonus episode at 3 p.m. Eastern today featuring all four weekday up first hosts. We got together to talk about our biggest takeaways from the voters we spoke to in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada.

And don't forget, Up First airs on the weekend, too. Aisha Roscoe and Scott Simon have all the news. It'll be right here in this feed or wherever you get your podcasts. And today's episode of Up First was edited by Emily Kopp, Raphael Nam, Roberta Rampton, Olivia Hampton, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ana Perez, Nia Dumas, and Chris Thomas. We get engineering support from Robert Rodriguez and Arthur Laurent. And our technical director is Hannah Globner.

This message comes from NPR sponsor Merrill. Whatever your financial goals are, you want a straightforward path there. But the real world doesn't usually work that way. Merrill understands that. That's why he's here.

That's why, with a dedicated Merrill advisor, you get a personalized plan and a clear path forward. Go to ml.com slash bullish to learn more. Merrill, a Bank of America company. What would you like the power to do? Investing involves risk. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, registered broker-dealer, registered investment advisor, member SIPC.

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