Econ Blog
The jobs report, sector by sector
The headline payroll number is one line of a much longer report. These charts break the month down by sector, by education, and by every measure of slack the BLS publishes.
By Matthew Dettman, ChFC, CLU, founder of Second Difference Solutions. Updated .
The Employment Situation report lands on the first Friday of most months and gets reduced to a single number by lunchtime. The number is real, but it is one line of a report that also covers eleven industry sectors, six measures of unemployment, participation by age and education, wages, hours, and job openings. This page is the rest of it.
Everything below is drawn from the same data snapshot, refreshed after each release. Figures cover September 2026 for the Employment Situation series and August 2026 for job openings and turnover (JOLTS). Weekly initial claims run through October 3, 2026 and continued claims through September 26, 2026.
September 2026, total nonfarm
Smooths a single noisy print
U-6 including underemployed: 7.60%
Above 1.0 means more postings than seekers
August 2026: earnings 3.11% against prices 3.35%
Prime age 25 to 54: 83.70%
The headline number
A single month's print is noisy and gets revised twice. The trailing averages are the more reliable read on direction: when the 3-month average crosses below the 12-month, hiring is decelerating even if the latest bar looks fine.
Latest month: 29,000 jobs. Three-month average 50,667, twelve-month average 41,333.
Which sectors are hiring
The eleven supersectors partition total nonfarm payrolls, so these bars sum exactly to the headline number. That makes it easy to see when a headline gain is broad or when it rests on one or two sectors.
6 of eleven sectors added jobs in September 2026 and 5 shed them. The largest gain was Education & Health at 20,000; the largest loss was Government at -17,000.
| Sector | Latest | 3-mo avg | 12-mo total | Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mining & Logging | -2,000 | -667 | +2,000 | 607,000 |
| Construction | +11,000 | +15,000 | +109,000 | 8,364,000 |
| Manufacturing | +9,000 | +14,667 | +40,000 | 12,652,000 |
| Trade & Transport | +18,000 | +16,667 | +53,000 | 28,778,000 |
| Information | -10,000 | -8,000 | -120,000 | 2,739,000 |
| Financial | -7,000 | -8,667 | -107,000 | 9,082,000 |
| Prof. & Business | -9,000 | -6,667 | +123,000 | 22,482,000 |
| Education & Health | +20,000 | +24,000 | +516,000 | 28,005,000 |
| Leisure & Hospitality | +10,000 | +3,000 | +62,000 | 16,969,000 |
| Other Services | +6,000 | +5,000 | +34,000 | 6,039,000 |
| Government | -17,000 | -3,667 | -216,000 | 23,327,000 |
The three-month average column is the one to read when a single month looks strange. A sector can post an outlier month on a strike, a seasonal-adjustment artifact, or a single large employer, and the twelve-month total is what survives all three.
Deliberately dense. The signal here is the spread between sectors and which lines sit persistently below zero, not any individual month.
A second opinion: ADP
| Sector | Latest | 4-wk avg | 52-wk total | Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural Resources & Mining | -2,000 | -1,250 | -48,000 | 1,621,000 |
| Manufacturing | +0 | -1,750 | -64,000 | 12,459,000 |
| Trade & Transport | -6,000 | -6,000 | -24,000 | 28,999,000 |
| Information | -1,000 | -1,000 | -10,000 | 2,806,000 |
| Financial | +2,000 | +1,750 | +35,000 | 8,729,000 |
| Prof. & Business | -5,000 | -3,750 | +67,000 | 22,197,000 |
| Education & Health | +1,000 | +11,500 | +616,000 | 26,729,000 |
| Leisure & Hospitality | +7,000 | +4,750 | +36,000 | 16,435,000 |
| Other Services | +5,000 | +500 | +75,000 | 4,693,000 |
ADP counts private payrolls from its own payroll processing records, weekly, on a different method from the BLS establishment survey. It covers private employers only, so government is absent, and it is not a preview of the BLS number. Where the two disagree, the disagreement is itself worth noting rather than resolving. The ADP series in this snapshot run through August 15, 2026.
How much slack is left
The gap between the two lines is the part of labor market weakness the headline rate does not count. It widened in each of the three downturns on this chart.
Above the line there is more than one posted opening for every job seeker, which is historically unusual and gives workers pricing power. The 2021 to 2022 peak was the highest in the series.
Quits is a confidence measure: people resign into a job they believe exists. Layoffs is the series that moves when something actually breaks, and it tends to stay flat until it does not.
Quits rate 1.90%, hires 3.30%, layoffs 1.00%.
Who is in the labor force
The headline rate has been falling since 2000 largely because the population is aging. The prime-age line strips that out, and it is the one that answers whether working-age people are actually returning to work.
The four lines move together but at very different levels, and the gap widens in every downturn. Recessions are not distributed evenly across educational attainment.
Currently 4.30% for workers without a high school diploma against 2.50% for those with a bachelor's degree or higher.
Wages against prices
The gap between the lines is real wage growth. Nominal wage gains that trail inflation are a pay cut in purchasing terms, which is why the headline earnings number on its own is not enough.
Early warning
Claims are weekly, so they turn well before the monthly payroll number. Initial claims measure new separations; continued claims measure how hard it is to find the next job. Continued claims rising while initial claims stay flat is the hiring-freeze signature.
The indicator compares the 3-month average unemployment rate against its low over the prior twelve months. Readings at or above 0.50 have coincided with the start of every recession since 1970, though the rule describes a pattern rather than causing one. The mid-2024 readings crossed 0.50 (0.57 in August 2024) and then eased back below the trigger, so treat a reading above 0.50 as a warning, not a verdict.
Current reading: 0.00.
Data notes
- Source. All series are pulled from FRED. The authoring agencies are the Bureau of Labor Statistics (payrolls, unemployment, participation, earnings, JOLTS), the Employment and Training Administration (jobless claims), and ADP (private payrolls).
- Revisions. The payroll number is revised in each of the two months after first publication, and the annual benchmark revision can move a whole year. A first print is an estimate, not a measurement.
- Seasonal adjustment. Every series here is seasonally adjusted. Comparing an adjusted series to an unadjusted one is a common way to produce a number that is wrong in an unobvious direction.
- Refresh. Figures update when the snapshot is regenerated after a release. The date stamp at the top of this page reflects the data, not the day you are reading it.
Related analysis
- The US labor market over time: The same slack, turnover, wage and claims series as line charts over one date range you set.
- Unemployment across three recessions: How the unemployment rate behaves across different downturns.
- Real GDP growth since 2000: The output trend the labor market moves alongside.
- CPI vs Core PCE: The inflation gauges to read next to the report's wage series.