We'll get the November jobs report a week from today. Jobs reports come out on the first Friday of the month. Given the timing of when it hit, the October jobs report didn't show any impacts from Hurricanes Helene and Milton or the strike from Boeing employees. What does that mean? It wouldn't be shocking if the last jobs report before the election looked poor because of natural disasters.

N.B.C. News is one of the early outlets trying to set the stage for the report for readers, telling them that any job report will reflect the impact of the hurricane while "masking some economic gains." And it's likely to be true that these job losses will mask whatever else is happening in the economy at that time. But it's wrong to tell people that the hurricanes and strikes are caveats—they're not. This information is vital.

For several weeks, weekly jobless claims jumped in America. Everyone knows that this jump was solely the problem of hurricanes Helene and Milton. Those numbers finally started to settle down this week, but those jobless claims were the highest they'd been in a year for those few weeks.

So why bring this up? The preemptive spin on this jobs report, which is already starting, will be to throw it out because we know natural disasters are impacting the data. But that by itself is important: the federal government's response to hurricanes Helene and Milton matters to voters. And if unemployment is worsened by that, plus some strikes, that tells us something important is happening in the economy.

Hand-waving that away is wrong.

We're just starting to see the first accurate estimates of how much recovery costs will be with Helene. In North Carolina alone, Gov. Roy Cooper announced that Helene caused at least $53 billion in damages to the state. He added, "It is no exaggeration to describe Helene as the deadliest and most damaging storm ever to hit North Carolina," Cooper said while unveiling his request to the General Assembly for $3.9 billion to help pay for repairs and revitalization. He called it a "down payment on western North Carolina's future."

We also learned that 41 people remain missing from Helene, and four of those who died during the storm are unidentified. Another three people in Tennessee haven't been found from the storm damage. For reference, Helene made landfall in Florida late on the evening of September 26, which means we're coming up on the one-month anniversary of the storm's landfall.

Goldman Sachs estimates Helene's impact on the economy could be a loss of as many as 50,000 jobs. As winter closes in on the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, people are living in tents because they have nothing left.

This is not noise in a report—these are real people with real losses who deserve to be at the top of the government's list for assistance and aid. The amount of infrastructure and buildings alone that were washed away by this storm is apocalyptic in some towns. 

The Biden-Harris administration's response to this storm is very much on the ballot as we head down the stretch, as are these job losses and the people suffering from the continuing aftermath of Helene. The press enjoys talking about misinformation surrounding F.E.M.A. and the government response, but the real story remains the lives impacted by this storm. 

Congress is out of session heading into the election, and the White House has made little attempt to push for anything new. We've got plenty of excuses all around but very few answers on what happens. Meanwhile, real people are suffering, and the odds of getting their livelihoods back anytime soon are low. We barely have roads and electricity rebuilt in some of these towns, let alone anything beyond that.

The jobs report in November will tell the truth about the economy: a region of our country was deeply impacted by hurricanes and needs help. That won't change by the time we get to November, and any caveats the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts on that won't be important. The real story is that entire counties and cities in our country were wiped off the map, and we have to rebuild them.

For Harris, it's a mark against her. She responded last out of everyone else who toured the region and tried to pretend she was in charge by the time Milton came around. Trump has campaigned multiple times in North Carolina and the surrounding region, focusing on these issues. Harris has dropped the ball, as has F.E.M.A. 

The jobs report should reflect these issues, not put an asterisk on it and hand-wave the problems away.