7 ms·
U.S. had almost no job growth in 2025
- josefritzishere 9mo agoThe US lost 600,000 jobs just in January. The future is bleak.
- nindalf 9mo agoWhat? > America’s economy added 130,000 jobs in January, almost double the number that analysts had been expecting, indicating that the labour market might have picked up after months of apparent stagnation. Unemployment also fell to 4.3%, a slight dip from the previous month. The figures may put off the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates as quickly as Donald Trump would like.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- taeric 9mo agoI'm assuming this is talking about the revised numbers for 2025? And if that revised so heavily downward, hard to imagine the latest numbers are somehow more stable?
- dataflow 9mo agoHow does BLS even know if each person in the country is unemployed or seeking a job?
- rybosworld 9mo agoMostly through payroll data/surveys.
- mandevil 9mo agoThe same way that anyone would: they conduct a statistical sample and report unemployment numbers based on that. Source: 15 years ago I was one of the people they contacted. As I recall, a letter came to our apartment, asking for the adult (18+) who had their birthday closest to that date to contact them and provide a phone number and some basic demographic data. That was me, not my roommate, so for the next 12 months I got a call once a month asking me for my employment details about a specific week that month- had I been looking for a job, was I still employed, etc.
- rybosworld 9mo agoYeah not sure where the 600k figure is coming from. But that 130k that's being reported is almost certainly not correct, and will be revised down. The ADP is only reporting 22k for January. Which lines up very closely with the monthly pace of job creation for 2025 (~15k, on average). The downward revisions on the BLS numbers for 2025 are the largest on record. There's a sentiment that the monthly numbers were purposely inflated for 2025.
- mandevil 9mo ago> There's a sentiment that the monthly numbers were purposely inflated for 2025. Jobs data (which comes from a survey of employers) is always subject to revisions, and the revisions have gotten worse. But it's not necessarily political. Back when Trump unprecedentedly fired Erika McEntarfer (former head of the BLS) I looked into this and tried to understand where the data comes from, how it works. Basically, the BLS surveys 50k out of the several million companies in the US. But response rates have dropped rather strongly since the Pandemic in particular. If you give them 3 months, it gets up to 90%, but after 1 month it is only 50%. This would be okay, except that the response rates turn out to be skewed: large companies almost always respond quickly, small companies respond more slowly. And small companies tend to be much more responsive to the state of the overall economy than large companies- for good and for bad. And even the response times of the small companies turn out to be sensitive to economic trends, for good and for bad: the companies that respond more slowly to surveys, it turns out, tend to be the most sensitive to the broader economy, the first to fire in a recession, but also the first to hire when the economy is getting better. The final thing is that these companies can be highly correlated with each other and the broader economy. So there are always corrections, but in placid economic weather the corrections cancel out- some of the extrapolations are high, some are low, it ends up being close to 0. And the financial markets understand how to read these corrections. They understand that when the economy is shifting you will get all of the misses in the same direction- either high or low- and to pay attention these corrections data. All of these misses low in 2025 are a very bad sign for the economy overall, not necessarily a sign of political pressure. That would probably show up in large, sustained differences to the ADP numbers or other privately reported numbers, rather than revisions announced by the BLS itself. Both Trump I's appointee to head the BLS, William Beach (who served from 2019-2023) and Biden's appointee Erika McEntarfer (whom Trump fired in 2025) wanted to modernize the survey system, make it easier for companies to respond, and get better and faster data collection. But, because this system is so incredibly important to the markets, they wanted a larger budget to run the new system and the old system together for a significant portion of time (several years) so that everyone would be comfortable understanding the intricacies of the system, what revisions would mean, etc. And since they didn't get that budget (in fact it got cut) they decided to prioritize the old system rather than throw it away and experiment with something different.
- lgleason 9mo agoOnly a golden age for the uber wealthy.
- morkalork 9mo agoGilded Age 2.0
- heathrow83829 9mo ago>>> "Still, Wednesday’s report also shows that not nearly as many jobs were added in 2025 as thought and last year will go down as the worst year for hiring since 2020, or since 2003 outside of a recession." Almost no jobs were added net and the few that were, were all in health care, 131K i think the article said. what i find interesting is that unemployment percent still looks low. is it accurate? even if it's wrong, shouldn't it be correct on a relative basis? why isn't this number climbing?
- Arainach 9mo agoUS Unemployment statistics have a number of flaws, including not capturing people who are underemployed (taking any low paying job to try to make ends meet instead of working in a higher paying field they are qualified for) and not capturing those who are no longer searching for a job
- mc32 9mo agoThere are flawed, however, as long as the calculations are consistent then the numbers are reliable across time.
- baron816 9mo agoThese data are also reported by the BLS: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE. It’s been creeping up for sure, but still historically low. And I’d attest that the headline rate is still the “real” rate.
- nickff 9mo agoI agree that the most-commonly reported 'head-line' numbers can be misleading, but more detailed statistics are available. One of my favorites is the labor participation rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART You might want to look at the 'not in labor force' numbers: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU05026642 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU05026642
- 9mo ago
- dzonga 9mo agoit's almost telling how Super Bowl commercials tell the mood of the country's population and economy latest edition was A.I, prediction markets, GLP-1s -- all indicative of a "Casino" economy where you know the odds are against you but you gamble anyway so you might become one of the few winners the US is caught up in a weird middle - where its lacking labor capacity for essential manufacturing & other positive contributions while also lacking job making capacity because all the money has gone into casino economy not capacity building
- jonas21 9mo agoWhat do AI or GLP-1s have to do with a casino economy?
- unethical_ban 9mo agoAI, being a boom with a lot of companies trying to make something out of nothing. GLP, not sure.
- bawolff 9mo agoI don't really agree, but you could argue that GLP is targeting people who want a magic solution just like casinos.
- toomuchtodo 9mo agoGLP-1s target humans who need a pharma intervention to assist in making their reward center in their brain more defensive against the system they are forced to exist in. We don’t need ads for it, we should hand it out over the counter to anyone who wants or needs it, but I digress.
- kakacik 9mo agoWhich evil system do they live in? Veggies are the cheapest stuff I can find in supermarkets anywhere. I agree their reward systems are fried, but thats a result of decades of over-eating on the worst junk mankind ever produced, while this whole 'evil system' screams on them from all sides how stupid and suicidal this is, how sugar is same as cocaine and so on. Its all a mental problem (and here in Switzerland this is general consensus among doctors and I have one for wife), and an attempt to solve it anywhere else down the decision line apart from the head is just (temporarily, in case of glp) fixing the consequences.
- tk-1234 9mo agoIf most of the capital is in the hands of tech bros who live out their fantasies from 1980s SciFi novels, it is going to be misallocated. The fake economy is now about AI, gambling and cryptocurrencies. It does not help that the current administration contains several Epstein disciples when Epstein was into these tech fantasies as well. The misallocation of capital claims to grow the pie, but it dilutes the pie with fake growth so people that own the fake parts have more money to buy up the good parts.
- jimmaswell 9mo agoAnyone lumping AI in with gambling and crypto scams has their head firmly in the sand. The value in making it easier to make computers do things for you is plainly obvious. People all across the tech literacy spectrum are seeing benefits, from coding projects that took days or weeks taking minutes to hours to finish to soccer moms telling their phones to fix up family photos and find them the email from the doctor's that's buried in their inbox. Competent doctors are getting help catching things from scans/symptoms that would take House MD to connect but are a breeze for an LLM, and there are numerous reports of people figuring out their own longstanding obscure medical issues by asking an LLM to speculate on their symptoms after a hundred doctors failed to diagnose it. Someone who can't afford to get ripped off by a mechanic and doesn't have the spare hours in the day and technical knowledge to Google it the old-fashioned way has a decent chance of solving simple car problems instantly on their own by asking ChatGPT or Gemini. It's frankly a miracle, and it keeps making more leaps and bounds every time the peanut gallery starts going on about it having hit a wall it can never improve from.
- giantg2 9mo ago"Anyone lumping AI in with gambling and crypto scams has their head firmly in the sand." I disagree. While some AI related stuff is promising, much of it is consumerist or data harvesting. Many people are basically gambling on any sort of stock related to AI (vs diversifying). Education is likely declining as adoption allows students to avoid critical thought or applying concepts. "It's frankly a miracle, and it keeps making more leaps and bounds every time the peanut gallery starts going on about it having hit a wall it can never improve from." Explainable by engineering isn't a miracle. It's just an expanse on neural nets and the other predecessors from 30 years ago. In my experience, it has trouble following basic directions such as keeping a summary to a single page.
- llmslave 9mo agoEven worse, look at white collar job growth among american citizens. It has been negative for years
- mrtksn 9mo agoThe content is the same as this article but the headline on Yahoo Finance is: "Jobs report smashes expectations as payrolls grow by 130,000" There's no chance for survival just by glancing over the headlines.
- ceejayoz 9mo agoThat's noted in this article: > One bright spot was last month, when hiring increased by 130,000 roles. This was significantly more than the 55,000 additions that had been expected by economists. But that's 2026 hiring, and the article's about the 2025 revisions. (And the January number, as they all do, may get revised in a few months.)
- master_crab 9mo agoIf I recall, the numbers almost always get revised down.
- ceejayoz 9mo agoNo. See the chart: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bls-jobs-report-revision-trump-fires-commissioner/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bls-jobs-report-revision-trump-... Both directions are common.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- daemonologist 9mo agoHistorically both directions are common, but in 2025 every month was revised down from the preliminary report except October. (They were revised down a lot in 2023 and 2024 as well fwiw.) https://www.hiringlab.org/2026/02/11/january-2026-jobs-report/ https://www.hiringlab.org/2026/02/11/january-2026-jobs-repor...
- kingkawn 9mo agoIf all of 2025 was overestimated, possibly for political purposes, then why believe that the 2026 numbers are accurate?
- oytis 9mo agoUS population has also barely grown so that us fine?
- ceejayoz 9mo agoNewborn babies don't go straight into the labor market.
- pc86 9mo agoNewborn babies don't go straight into the labor market yet.
- master_crab 9mo agoGotta drive that shareholder value.
- throwway120385 9mo agoThe children yearn for the mines.
- coolThingsFirst 9mo agoLegal working age needs to be reduced to 2, so they have the necessary 20 years of experience after college to get an entry level job.
- _DeadFred_ 9mo agoImagine how quickly we could end the national debt if Americans weren't so stingy with their labor like this. "Dr. Oz Says Americans Starting Work 'Right Out Of High School' Or Retiring One Year Later Would 'More Than Remove' The National Debt" https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dr-oz-says-americans-starting-190841207.html?guccounter=1 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dr-oz-says-americans-starting...
- oytis 9mo agoWhat about working population? Did it grow? I thought much of a slow population growth is due to lower immigration, not declining birth rates?
- lateforwork 9mo agoAny jobs data coming from the government is worthless, because gov employees will be fired for anything that makes Trump look bad. See link below. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/why-firing-bls-commissioner-should-concern-every-data-user https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/why-firing-bls-commissioner...
- JohnMakin 9mo agoJust a weird, completely unscientific personal metric I've used to note that the economy seems like it's shrinking - last year was the first year I've seen since the release of the original switch where switch/switch 2 was not constantly sold out (usually poached by resellers early in the AM) every time I visit target. There's a full shelf of them since late last summer. Unless nintendo actually produced enough units for the first time in recent company history, I suspect it indicates something.
- ta9000 9mo agoIt doesn’t help that the Switch 2 library is woefully inadequate.
- PlatoIsADisease 9mo agoThis didn't affect Wii, WiiU, Switch or Switch 2. Either people are waking up that Nintendo is selling nostalgia or the economy is not doing well. I hope the former, there is something that feels sick to think Nintendo force fed corporate mascots to me when I was under the age of 1. To this day, I religiously buy Zelda games, even though I haven't enjoyed them since N64. FOMO mind control.
- philistine 9mo agoWhat are you talking about? The WiiU sold like crap! It was a disaster! And a big reason it was a disaster was because the Wii itself was not selling anymore. It was over and out, people were fed up with it. Nintendo is a very very very bad economic indicator, they're on their own planet, and they're far from selling nostalgia. They're selling well known characters in new environments. They completely redesigned Donkey Kong, that's not what a company coasting on nostalgia would do!
- PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago> They're selling well known characters in new environments. They completely redesigned Donkey Kong, that's not what a company coasting on nostalgia would do! Wat But seriously... Wat? Do you realize what you said?
- mullingitover 9mo agoMay as well call this what it is: stagflation. The anemic employment market calls for lower rates, but inflation still persistently being 50% higher than it should be calls for rate hikes. My prediction: this inflation isn't going away without viciously painful rate hikes. It'll probably get worse.
- xnx 9mo agoStagflation or vibecession? Surveys say people feel down about the economy, but their spending says otherwise.
- dlisboa 9mo agoObviously not a macroeconomic analysis but if you watch YouTube channels like Caleb Hammer it seems people are literally spending their life away. No planning, no asset building, just hedonistic stuff. The kind of people you see there have the mentality of: "I'll never pay this debt down anyway so I'll max out my loans to do what I want before I die". Not very optimistic, even if it inflates the consumer market.
- mullingitover 9mo agoI hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.' - Jack Handey
- dlisboa 9mo agoA great example of what seems to be the current ethos for the generation (I realize Handey isn't of this generation). Very much "nothing matters as we'll all die anyway, who cares about what comes after". I don't fault the sentiment, to be clear, it's just an indication of the socio-economic situation that fostered it.
- xnx 9mo agoThe rich cheat taxes with "Buy, Borrow, Die". It's only fair the poor should have their own strategy.
- misterbishop 9mo agoWe're living through an extended recession statistically masked by the AI bubble.
- ChrisArchitect 9mo agoRelated: U.S. jobs disappear at fastest January pace since great recession https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46925669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46925669
- bitwize 9mo agoThe economy is getting one-shotted by AI.
- JohnTHaller 9mo agoWord on the street is the January numbers are about to get revised down by a good bit.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- kd913 9mo agoThe US job stats were revised down for 2025 to 181k, but somehow the Country gained 130k in January? Is anyone looking at this and the CBO figures and not just realising the government is straight lying about the figures? Gonna believe Powell and Waller on this one.
- keeda 9mo agoI've mentioned this before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45987316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45987316), but I follow a labor economist on LinkedIn who puts things into a balanced perspective. The thing he reminds us often is you can't take these numbers in isolation. Job numbers need to be considered in the context of a lot of other numbers, including population growth. As the other top thread yesterday highlighted, the US is experiencing slowing population growth, which may also have been exacerbated by the recent upheavals in immigration. I may be butchering the theory here, but the point is that the economy is a dynamic, inter-connected system, and a smaller population requires fewer jobs. (As a silly example, you need many more car mechanics for a town with a population of 1000 as opposed to a population of 100.) That actually has implications for GDP growth as well. That's not to say the overall economy is doing great, just that these job numbers should not be taken as a complete indicator of it.
- dk8996 9mo agoI've been tracking number of post in "Who wants to be hired", this month has been the highest I a few years
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/business/economy/after-a-year-of-sluggish-hiring-2026-could-be-off-to-a-stronger-start.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/business/economy/after-a-... 1Q 2026: 130,000 jobs added, unemployment 4.3% "It is true that some of the fields that have been adopting A.I. fastest - such as information and professional and business services - have been shedding jobs. That is also partly because those fields hired much more quickly during the pandemic years, and have been going through a correction." IT, finance losing jobs Non-IT, non-finance, e.g., healthcaare, gaining jobs