The US added 119,000 jobs in September, but labor market growth remains uneven

After a 43-day government shutdown-induced delay, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is slowly returning to its regular programming.

On Thursday, the BLS released the long-awaited September jobs data, originally scheduled to publish on Oct. 3, but stalled due to the government shutdown. While the data is nearly two months old, it still is useful for assessing the broader context of the labor market, some leading economists say.

Step back in time. Private non-farm employers added 119,000 jobs in September, significantly beating the Dow Jones estimate of 50,000. September, based on initial estimates, marked an uptick in hiring following a sharp cooldown in job growth earlier this summer. By comparison, the BLS revised job gains for July and August down by 33,000 for both months, with July adding just 72,000 jobs and August losing 4,000.

“What we see in today’s report, adding 119,000 jobs, says that maybe things are holding up a little better than some of the previous reports were telling us,” said Cory Stahle, a senior economist at Indeed. At the same time, job gains have been smaller this year than in recent years, he noted. For example, employers added 240,000 jobs in September 2024.

Despite the strong top-line number, a more granular look at job gains by industry and employment statistics shared in the household survey shows a mixed bag for the US labor market in September.

By industry, healthcare led in job growth again, adding 43,000 positions in September, with the most gains in ambulatory services and hospitals. That was followed by food services, which added 37,000 jobs, and individual and family services—a subsector of social assistance—which added nearly 20,000.

At the same time, employment in transportation and warehousing fell by 25,000, primarily due to job losses in warehousing and storage, and in couriers and messenger services. Professional and business services followed, adding 20,000 fewer jobs in September, largely driven by reductions in administrative and support services. Employment in the federal government also fell by 3,000 that month, and has declined by 97,000 jobs since January.

“Outside of healthcare and social assistance, leisure and hospitality, and local government, nonfarm payroll employment has shrunk by 151k jobs this year,” Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s head of economics for the Americas, wrote on the social platform, noting much of that decline was in federal job losses. “As job growth remains heavily skewed, the labor market remains fragile.”

The overall unemployment rate edged up to 4.4% in September, up 0.1 percentage points from August, and 0.3 percentage points year over year. But some demographics have seen more unemployment increases than others. The unemployment rate for Black or African-American individuals rose year over year from 5.7% to 7.5% in September. And the unemployment rate for women aged 20 and older increased from 3.6% to 4.2% year over year, while jobless claims for men rose from 3.8% to 4%.

“We are seeing that, even within these recent upticks, it’s not being felt equally. We’re seeing much more of it in some groups than in others,” said Stahle.

Zoom out. While we await the BLS data for October and November (if they’re published at all), employers are already planning for 2026. Many uncertainties will continue to plague employers and their talent strategies, including Trump administration policies like tariffs and an immigration crackdown.

A new report summarizing 2026 economic forecasts from Indeed Hiring Lab, and co-authored by Stahle, predicts that the labor market will stagnate, with job openings stabilizing but not growing, unemployment ticking up slightly, and GDP growth remaining modest.

“We’re seeing a lot of businesses and a lot of people in the economy saying, ‘We’re not quite sure where to go, so let’s just kind of keep doing what we’ve been doing,’” said Stahle.

Some factors could change that. Immigration, for example, has buoyed the US labor market for the last few years, but with the foreign-born population shrinking by one million and foreign job seeker interest in US employers waning, some industries could see tighter labor supplies. That includes healthcare, which employs more than one million immigrants, according to one analysis.

“It’s concerning when you’re placing so much stock in a single industry for job growth, and that industry does employ migrant workers,” said Stahle. “If we see immigration drop there and slow down even a little bit, that can have a real rippling effect throughout the labor market.”

Another factor is GDP growth, which is largely based on consumer spending. High income earners have made up more than half of all spending in recent years, in turn boosting the US GDP. If that changes, businesses could be in trouble.

“If you start to see people cutting back on spending, that can be a really dire sign for the economy,” Stahle said. Watching for changes in “spending is key, because if the spending drops off, the businesses oftentimes have to reduce headcount, and they have to adjust to that labor market shift.”