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This Bureau of Labor Statistics report for September 2025 tells us about the health of the American job market, and it paints a picture of an economy that’s still growing but has clearly slowed down.
The report is available here.
The Big Picture: Modest Growth, Rising Unemployment
The economy added 119,000 jobs in September, which sounds like a lot until you realize that this pace is notably slower than what we’ve seen in recent years. To put this in perspective, the report notes that job growth has “shown little change since April,” meaning the labor market has been essentially treading water for about five months. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, compared to 4.1% a year ago. That means about 7.6 million Americans are actively looking for work but haven’t found it yet.
Now, a 4.4% unemployment rate is still historically quite low—we’re not in crisis territory. But the direction matters. When unemployment creeps upward month after month, it suggests employers are becoming more cautious about hiring, which often signals broader economic uncertainty.
Why Was This Report So Late?
You might notice this report came out on November 20th, but it’s about September. Normally, employment data arrives about three weeks after the reference month ends. The delay happened because of a federal government shutdown that halted BLS operations for over six weeks.
This shutdown has another important consequence: there will be no October employment report at all. The household survey data (which measures unemployment) simply wasn’t collected during October. We’ll have to wait until mid-December for the next update, which will cover November.
Where Jobs Grew and Where They Didn’t
The pattern of which industries are hiring versus shrinking reveals a lot about the economy’s current dynamics.
Health care continues its steady expansion, adding 43,000 jobs in September. This sector has been remarkably consistent, averaging about 42,000 new jobs per month over the past year. Why? America’s population is aging, chronic disease rates remain high, and healthcare services are relatively recession-resistant—people still need medical care regardless of economic conditions. Within healthcare, ambulatory services (think doctor’s offices and outpatient clinics) and hospitals drove most of the growth.
Food services and drinking places added 37,000 jobs, suggesting Americans are still eating out and socializing. This sector is often considered a bellwether for consumer confidence—when people feel financially secure, they spend more on restaurants and bars.
Social assistance grew by 14,000 jobs, particularly in individual and family services. This could reflect increased demand for support services or continued expansion of programs serving vulnerable populations.
On the losing side, transportation and warehousing shed 25,000 jobs, with warehousing and courier services particularly hard hit. This is significant because these sectors boomed during the pandemic-era e-commerce surge. The current losses suggest that bubble has deflated—either consumer spending patterns have normalized or companies over-hired during the boom years and are now right-sizing.
Federal government employment fell by 3,000 in September and is down a striking 97,000 since January. This reflects the administration’s workforce reduction efforts. The report notes that employees on paid leave or receiving severance pay are counted as employed, so the actual reduction in federal workers actively on the job may be larger than these numbers suggest.
What Happened to Previous Estimates?
Here’s something that often gets overlooked: the BLS revised its estimates for July and August downward by a combined 33,000 jobs. July went from +79,000 to +72,000, and August was revised from +22,000 to actually negative 4,000—meaning the economy lost jobs in August, not gained them.
This matters because these revisions change our understanding of the labor market’s trajectory. What we thought was very weak growth in August was actually job losses. The labor market is softer than we realized.
Wages: Good News and Context
Average hourly earnings rose to $36.67, up 9 cents (0.2%) from August and 3.8% higher than a year ago. This 3.8% annual wage growth is important to compare against inflation. If prices are rising at, say, 2.5%, then workers are experiencing real gains in purchasing power. But if inflation is higher than 3.8%, workers are actually falling behind despite the nominal wage increase.
The average workweek held steady at 34.2 hours. This stability is worth noting because when employers expect a downturn, they often reduce hours before cutting headcount outright. Stable hours suggest employers aren’t yet pulling back dramatically.
Reading Between the Lines: What This Tells Us
Several indicators in this report suggest growing uncertainty in the labor market.
First, the number of long-term unemployed (people out of work for 27 weeks or more) is 1.8 million, representing nearly a quarter of all unemployed Americans. When people stay unemployed for extended periods, their skills can atrophy and they become harder to place, creating a more persistent problem.
Second, part-time employment for economic reasons—people who want full-time work but can only find part-time—remained elevated at 4.6 million. These are underemployed workers who aren’t counted as unemployed but aren’t fully participating in the economy either.
Third, the labor force participation rate of 62.4% has changed little over the year. This measures what percentage of working-age adults are either employed or actively looking for work. The fact that it’s not rising suggests there isn’t a surge of sidelined workers coming back into the labor force, even as the population grows.
The Broader Economic Context
This jobs report arrives amid several crosscurrents in the economy. Federal workforce reductions are clearly visible in the data. The transportation and warehousing sectors appear to be normalizing after pandemic-era distortions. Meanwhile, healthcare continues its long-term structural growth.
The combination of modest job creation, rising unemployment, downward revisions to prior months, and ongoing federal job cuts suggests an economy that’s cooling. Whether this represents a healthy normalization after the post-pandemic surge or the early signs of more serious weakness is the crucial question—and one this single report can’t definitively answer.
The missing October data makes this particularly frustrating for economists and policymakers. We’ll need to wait until December 16th for the next update, at which point we’ll have a better sense of whether September’s weakness was a temporary dip or part of a more sustained trend.
For ordinary Americans, the practical takeaway is that the job market remains reasonably healthy but is no longer booming. Job seekers may find the market more competitive than it was a year or two ago, but opportunities continue to exist, particularly in healthcare, food service, and social assistance. Those in federal government, warehousing, or certain manufacturing roles face more uncertain prospects.