U.S. Jobs Report: Live Updates
Pinned
What to know about the report.
The Labor Department is set to release employment data on Wednesday that will provide a first sign of whether job growth in 2026 will look any better than last year's, which was the slowest since 2009 (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/business/economy/business-economy-jobs-report-december.html) not counting the 2020 pandemic year. The closely watched report is set for release at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.
A number of statistical quirks may influence the outcome. One has to do with a holiday season, during which retailers didn't hire as many temporary workers as usual (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/business/retailers-scale-back-holiday-hiring.html). That could have resulted in fewer layoffs in January, which translates into a stronger reading after the Bureau of Labor Statistics adjusts for typical seasonal fluctuations.
Another has to do with a change in the way the bureau estimates how many jobs were generated or destroyed by businesses that close and open each month. That's expected to knock a few tens of thousands of jobs off the total.
And the whole report was delayed by several days after a short government shutdown, which came on the heels of a six-week shutdown that created a permanent gap in the household survey.
Data wrinkles aside, a number of conflicting indicators have made the labor market exceptionally difficult to assess in recent months.
Initial claims (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA) for unemployment insurance remained very low in January, suggesting that employers are not laying off more people than usual, but job openings dropped (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSJOL) to their lowest point since September 2020. Private-sector measures from the payroll processor ADP and the job posting aggregator Revelio Labs showed very low (https://adp-ri-nrip-static.adp.com/artifacts/usner/20260204/ADPNATIONALEMPLOYMENTREPORTPressRelease202601%20FINAL.pdf?_ga=2.139184499.1565624609.1770746079-1784063834.1770746079) and negative (https://www.reveliolabs.com/news/rpls/the-us-economy-shed-13k-jobs-in-january-2026/) employment growth.
Most analysts don't see the bottom falling out of the labor market. But there's little to indicate an energetic rebound, either. The median economist polled by Bloomberg estimated that employers added 68,000 positions in January. That would be an improvement on the 15,000 jobs added on average over the previous six months.
"We still think that the labor market, though it’s softer than it was a year or two ago, is still holding up," said Augustine Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group. "We’re going to see more of that kind of softer job growth that we saw in 2025, but not a significant slowing from that point."
Trump plans to nominate a 'data nerd' to lead Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which will release the latest jobs numbers on Wednesday, has been without a Senate-confirmed director since President Trump fired the previous head of the agency after it reported disappointing jobs numbers.
But late last month, Mr. Trump said he would nominate Brett Matsumoto (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/business/trump-bureau-of-labor-statistics-brett-matsumoto.html), a little-known government economist, to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Mr. Matsumoto is Mr. Trump’s second pick to lead the bureau, which produces data on the labor market, inflation, and other topics. In August, the president announced he would appoint E.J. Antoni (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/business/economy/trump-bls-commissioner.html), a conservative economist, to the job, but withdrew the nomination (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/business/bls-nominee-withdrawn.html) after it faced bipartisan criticism.
Mr. Matsumoto is unlikely to face the same backlash. He has little public profile outside the nerdy world of statistical experts but is relatively well known inside it, in part because he was previously active on social media, writing posts that explained the nuances of statistical data. That differed starkly from Mr. Antoni, who was criticized for social media posts that often appeared to distort economic statistics to support partisan positions.
Mr. Matsumoto did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Trump announced the nomination in a post on Truth Social, where he reprised his attacks on the labor statistics agency. The president said the bureau to date had been led by "WEAK and STUPID people" and had produced "VERY inaccurate numbers."
Mr. Matsumoto, whose nomination must still be confirmed by the Senate, earned his doctorate in economics from the University of North Carolina in 2015 and has worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics ever since, most recently conducting research related to the measurement of inflation. He has spent the past year on assignment at the Council of Economic Advisers, a fairly standard practice for government economists.
With the jobs report expected to show some sluggishness, the White House has spent the last few days trying to downplay the significance of the data, insisting that the labor market is strong even if the numbers may initially suggest otherwise.
On Monday, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, chalked up the potential for a poor showing to a series of factors, including the rise of artificial intelligence and the president's mass deportations. In an interview on CNBC, he said: "One shouldn’t panic if you see a sequence of numbers that are lower than you’re used to."
Peter Navarro, the president's trade adviser, offered a similar take on Tuesday. On one hand, he told Fox Business, he was "not expecting a weak number," but he also encouraged investors to reset expectations on jobs, given that the president's deportations had changed the needs of the labor market.
Experts agree that the number of new jobs needed to maintain a stable unemployment rate each month has fallen because of the president's immigration policies. But some have pointed out other serious economic consequences from those deportations.
'K-shaped' economy: What executives are saying.
The U.S. economy is growing, but not evenly.
What began as an uneven rebound from the Covid pandemic has hardened into what many economists describe as a "K-shaped" economy (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/business/k-shaped-economy.html), in which higher-income households pull ahead while lower-income households fall further behind (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/business/economic-divide-spending-inflation-jobs.html). High interest rates, rising costs, and the rapid growth of artificial intelligence could deepen those divides, economists warn.
"We are returning to a typical pattern of extremely high income inequality, and it now stands at a 60-year peak," Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at U.S. Bank, wrote in a recent report (https://www.usbank.com/corporate-and-commercial-banking/insights/economy/macro/k-shaped-economy.html). "The worry is not just where we stand now, but also whether ongoing developments will worsen the situation."
The net worth of the top 1 percent of households climbed to a record share of nearly 32 percent of the national total in the third quarter of 2025, according to data from the Federal Reserve (https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:144;series:Net%20worth;demographic:networth;population:all;units:shares), which started tracking household wealth in 1989. Spending patterns have also split: Households earning under $75,000 a year are spending less on discretionary categories like travel and experiences than they did in 2019, while those making more than $150,000 are spending more, according to Bank of America Institute (https://institute.bankofamerica.com/economic-insights/inside-consumers-wallets.html).
Retail sales softened in December, data released on Tuesday showed, weighed down by a slight drop in purchases of vehicles and food.
More executives are acknowledging the divide and its effects on their business. Delta Air Lines said in October that ticket sales for premium seats were expected to outpace those in the main cabin. The snack maker Mondelez said this month that consumers were "worried about overall affordability" and pulling back on snacking or shifting to value-store brands.
"They are fed up with the price increases — they don’t feel good about their personal economic outlook," Dirk Van de Put, chief executive of Mondelez, said during an earnings call. "And as a consequence, snacking is being affected."
As Fed considers when to restart rate cuts, the unemployment rate is in focus.
Officials at the Federal Reserve do not want the labor market to weaken further, meaning that fresh signs of unemployment rising across the country would likely compel the central bank to restart interest rate cuts.
Economists do not expect that to materialize in January’s data, however, suggesting the Fed has scope to once again stand pat when it meets next month.
The latest jobs report, which will be released on Wednesday, is forecast to show the unemployment rate steadying at 4.4 percent.
The unemployment rate has become a focal point for the Fed as it assesses the health of the labor market in the wake of immigration restrictions imposed by President Trump. The crackdown, which has led to a sharp slowdown of migration into the country, has decreased the supply of new workers available for hire. The number of new jobs the economy needs to keep the unemployment rate stable has dropped as a result, with research (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/macroeconomic-implications-of-immigration-flows-in-2025-and-2026-january-2026-update/) suggesting it could turn negative by this year. In 2024, the so-called monthly break-even rate was estimated to be well above 100,000 positions.
The Fed is trying to safeguard the labor market while also ensuring that rates are high enough for inflation to fall back to the central bank’s target of 2 percent. Price pressures have mounted as Mr. Trump’s tariffs have taken effect, although the overall impact has been more muted than initially expected. Officials at the Fed broadly expect the peak impact from those levies to hit in the first quarter of this year before inflation begins to decelerate again.
January’s Consumer Price Index report, set to be released on Friday, will give policymakers insight into whether that forecast is bearing out. Economists currently expect annual inflation to tick down to 2.5 percent after a 0.3 percent increase in monthly prices. "Core" inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy items, is expected to stay sticky at 2.5 percent, only slightly lower than the previous 2.6 percent annual pace.
In a sign, however, that labor-related price pressures remain muted, the employment cost index, a quarterly measure from the Labor Department that tracks changes in wages and benefits, unexpectedly slowed in the final three months of 2025.
Economists at Evercore ISI said that data, which came out on Tuesday, confirmed their view that the "economy is cooling under the hood, even though we face up to another six months of elevated tariff pass-through."
Beyond the impact of tariffs, the Fed is also contending with the prospects of stronger growth in the coming quarters as Americans receive larger refunds as a result of Mr. Trump’s new tax cuts. The ongoing boom in artificial intelligence investments is also expected to fuel economic growth.
Still, the most recent data tracking job openings, which was released last week, showed the number of available positions plunging to the lowest level since December 2017.
At the Fed’s meeting just last month (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/business/economy/fed-interest-rates.html), Jerome H. Powell, the chair, struck a more upbeat tone about the economic outlook. He described the labor market as "stabilizing" after a period of weakness last year and noted that consumer spending and business fixed investment remained strong, even as Americans had grown less confident about the economy.
"The economy has once again surprised us with its strength, not for the first time," Mr. Powell said.
That shift helped to justify the central bank’s decision at that meeting to pause rate cuts after a series of reductions last year. Between September and December, the Fed lowered rates by an aggregate three-quarters of a percentage point to a range of 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent.
By the December meeting, the Fed’s policy decisions had become increasingly fraught, reflecting a fissure between policymakers over how to weigh concerns about the labor market versus inflation. Those divisions have lessened, but even January’s vote to hold rates steady was not unanimous.
Stephen I. Miran, who has dissented at every meeting since he joined the Fed in September, voted in favor of a quarter-point cut. He was joined by Christopher J. Waller, a governor who was a finalist to replace Mr. Powell as chair when his term is up in May. A few days after that meeting, Mr. Trump tapped Kevin M. Warsh (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/us/politics/trump-fed-chair-kevin-warsh.html), a former Fed governor, for the job.
In explaining his dissent, Mr. Waller said that revisions to the jobs data would likely show no growth in employment last year.
"Zero. Zip. Nada," Mr. Waller said in a statement. "This does not remotely look like a healthy labor market."
Further cuts appear to hinge on the labor market breaking out of its current "low hire, low fire" state and layoffs beginning to pick up in a more broad-based way, or inflation significantly slowing. Mr. Powell last month stopped short of signaling any timeline for future moves, reiterating that the central bank is "well positioned" for the moment and to address any economic challenges. He did, however, downplay the possibility of a rate increase this year.
"We don’t take things off the table, but it isn’t anybody’s base case right now," Mr. Powell said.
Financial markets reflecting expectations of the Fed’s policy decisions currently point to the central bank next cutting rates in June, which will be the first meeting led by Mr. Warsh if he is confirmed by the Senate. Traders eventually expect rates to fall toward 3 percent by year-end, a level that many officials see as "neutral," or neither stimulative nor restrictive to growth. Mr. Trump, who said his support of Mr. Walsh was contingent on his pushing for lower borrowing costs, has argued for rates to be closer to 1 percent.
"If you’re somewhat in the neutral camp and inflation is above target, then it’s harder for them to make the case to cut," Priya Misra, a portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, said of the Fed. "They need a clear emergency message from the labor market."
Ms. Misra, who expects the Fed to eventually restart cuts in the latter half of the year, conceded that the labor market was in a vulnerable position.
"It feels unsustainable that we can be in a low-hire, low-fire state for much longer," she said. "At some point, what will happen as companies continue to hire less and less, the unemployment rate will start to rise."
Big revisions could alter the picture for jobs.
Wednesday’s jobs report won’t include numbers only for January. It will also incorporate major revisions that are expected to show that job growth was significantly weaker in 2024 and 2025 than initially believed.
The revisions are part of a longstanding annual process in which the Bureau of Labor Statistics reconciles its monthly estimates of job growth, which are derived from surveys, with less timely but more reliable data from state governments.
In the past, the so-called benchmark revisions have typically been small and attracted relatively little attention. But last year’s adjustment was the largest in years, reducing estimated job growth by nearly 600,000. This year’s version could be even bigger: A preliminary estimate, released in September, showed that employers added more than 900,000 fewer jobs (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/business/jobs-revisions-economy-fed.html) in late 2024 and early 2025 than indicated by the monthly data. If the final figure is similar, it would be the biggest revision since 2009 in percentage terms.
The consecutive large revisions have led some economists to question the reliability of the survey-based monthly estimates. In December, Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said economists at the central bank estimated that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been overstating employment gains by about 60,000 jobs per month — a figure that, if accurate, would suggest that employers were cutting payrolls for much of last year.
The revisions have become a political issue. President Trump pointed to the previous big adjustment when he fired Erika McEntarfer, the head of the statistical agency, last summer, saying it showed she was incompetent and biased against him.
Experts across the ideological spectrum rejected those accusations, noting that there was no consistent political pattern
