The U.S. labor market lost 92,000 jobs in February. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Going into the report, economists had predicted that employers added 50,000 jobs last month.
Thanks to the latest government shutdown, short as it was, the January jobs report on Wednesday and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation report, due Friday, are unusually close together. Normally, the jobs report lands on a Friday and the CPI report comes the following week.
The jobs report will have even more clout than usual. In addition to the monthly payrolls and unemployment numbers, each January release includes an annual revision to the jobs count. The benchmark update is expected to reveal a notable decrease in job growth in the year through March 2025.
Payrolls were up 50,000 last month and the unemployment rate ticked down a tenth to 4.4% from November’s revised rate of 4.5%. Revisions to payroll growth were negative, with combined October and November totals marked down 78,000. Over the past three months, overall monthly gains have averaged a loss of 22,000 jobs, due to federal government job losses. The private sector jobs market isn’t a whole lot stronger with the comparable average for the private sector at a low 29,000 per month.
Initial claims for unemployment fell last week with initial claims decreasing by 10,000 to 214,000, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 224,000 initial claims.
Continuing claims, the number of people already receiving benefits, rose to 1.92 million in the previous week,
Jobs in the health care and social assistance and leisure and hospitality sectors have risen by a combined 690,000 so far in 2025, according to the latest monthly jobs report published Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Excluding those two, total U.S. employment has declined by about 6,000 this year. In other words, 100% of new jobs in the United States this year have come from healthcare and hospitality.
The news from the ADP private sector employment survey this morning wasn’t good. Private-sector payrolls decreased by 32,000 in September and the August numbers were revised lower to show a 3,000 decline. The number of jobs lost in September exceeded all estimates in Bloomberg’s survey of economists.
The U.S. labor market was much weaker during much of 2024 and early 2025 than data initially showed, revised figures forty last year show. In the largest preliminary revision to jobs data on record, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said employers had created 911,000 fewer positions from April 2024 to March 2025 than previously reported. That’s less than half as many as the agency had initially indicated. The data will be revised again and finalized early next year. The typical pattern in these revisions would reverse part of today’s drop in the final revision.
Today’s dismal jobs report–and the shocking downward revision for June–may have marked an inflection point for this market: the point where soft job numbers changed from being a good thing because they heralded an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve to worries that the job market was so slow that it might be signaling a recession ahead. The economy added 22,000 jobs in August, far fewer than expected, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%, the highest since late 2021.
The downward revisions for June were brutal. Job data from June was revised downward to show the loss of 13,000 jobs, the first time the economy has lost jobs since December 2020, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
Expect another critical jobs report on Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report comes a little less than two weeks before the Federal Reserve meets on interest rates on September 17. Economists project that the economy added 75,000 jobs in August and that the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%. in the month from 4.2% in July. The four straight months of sub-100,000 payrolls growth would mark the weakest stretch since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
In contrast to last week, the coming week is light on economic news–but heavy on earnings. The question for the week: Will what are expected to be strong earnings outweigh anxiety over the economy and tariffs? Remember that last weeks’s very solid earnings weren’t enough to pull stocks into the green in the face of negative news on jobs, inflation and tariffs.Here’s the week’s economic calendar
The economy added 73,000 jobs in July, less than expected. But more shockingly, hiring in May and June was revised lower by a quarter of a million jobs, according to Labor Department data released Friday.
The unemployment rate in July also edged up slightly to 4.2%. Job creation for May and June was revised lower by a combined 258,000 jobs-—bringing June job creation down to 14,000, and May to 19,000.
In May the U.S. economy added 139,000 jobs. That beat economists’ projections for an addition of 125,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%.
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