Updat­ed at 12:10 p.m. ET

U.S. employ­ers added 128,000 jobs in Octo­ber as the unem­ploy­ment rate inched up to 3.6%.

Fri­day’s report from the Labor Depart­ment sug­gests job growth remains resilient, despite the ongo­ing trade war and tem­po­rary set­backs such as the Unit­ed Auto Work­ers strike at Gen­er­al Motors, which was set­tled a week ago.

Job gains for August and Sep­tem­ber were also revised upward by a com­bined 95,000.

“Over­all, it was a very strong report when you con­sid­er some of the head­winds,” said senior econ­o­mist Sarah House of Wells Far­go Secu­ri­ties. “While the labor mar­ket might not be grow­ing quite as quick­ly as it was in 2018 or even in the ear­ly part of this year, it’s not col­laps­ing by any means either. Employ­ers are still out there hir­ing. More peo­ple are col­lect­ing a pay­check. And that’s all a good sign for con­sumer spend­ing.”

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The GM strike did take a bite out of man­u­fac­tur­ing employ­ment. Fac­to­ries shed 36,000 jobs in Octo­ber. Some 46,000 GM work­ers are now back on the job after 40 days on the pick­et lines.

“They were start­ing to feel a lit­tle bit of the pinch, but they’re glad to be back,” said Randy Free­man, pres­i­dent of UAW Local 652 in Lans­ing, Mich. “They’re glad to be work­ing, and hav­ing this behind them, and going into the hol­i­day sea­son.”

Man­u­fac­tur­ing has also suf­fered from slow­ing demand in the rest of the world as well as the pres­i­den­t’s trade war. A sep­a­rate report from the Insti­tute for Sup­ply Man­age­ment showed man­u­fac­tur­ing activ­i­ty con­tract­ed in Octo­ber for the third con­sec­u­tive month.

That was off­set in the Octo­ber jobs report, though, by strong growth in the much larg­er ser­vices side of the econ­o­my. Ser­vices — such as hos­pi­tal­i­ty and health care — are typ­i­cal­ly con­sumed local­ly, and so are less affect­ed by glob­al forces.

The mod­est rise in the unem­ploy­ment rate came as hun­dreds of thou­sands of new peo­ple entered the work­force.

“That’s encour­ag­ing that folks feel like there’s job oppor­tu­ni­ties out there,” House said. “We’re get­ting more peo­ple com­ing in and look­ing for work.”

Aver­age wages over the past 12 months have increased 3%, a slight accel­er­a­tion from the pre­vi­ous month.

The U.S. econ­o­my is grow­ing more slow­ly now than it was ear­li­er in the year — dragged down in part by weak busi­ness invest­ment. On Wednes­day, the Com­merce Depart­ment report­ed that the econ­o­my grew just 1.9% between July and Sep­tem­ber.

Even­tu­al­ly, that slow­er growth could become a drag on the job mar­ket and that in turn would cut into con­sumers’ buy­ing pow­er. But Fed­er­al Reserve Chair­man Jerome Pow­ell told reporters this week he’s not wor­ried yet.

“That’s a risk that we’ve been mon­i­tor­ing, but we don’t see it yet,” Pow­ell said.

The cen­tral bank cut inter­est rates by a quar­ter per­cent­age point on Wednes­day to guard against fur­ther slow­ing. But Pow­ell sug­gest­ed that might be the last rate cut for a while, unless the econ­o­my wors­ens.

“Con­sumers are doing well and are focused on the good job mar­ket and ris­ing incomes,” he said. “That is the thing that is push­ing the econ­o­my for­ward and it does­n’t seem to have been affect­ed so far by weak­ness in the oth­er areas.”