Friday, November 13, 2026
U.S. employers added 165,000 jobs in October and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1 per cent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday. August and September were revised up by a combined 84,000. More than a quarter of the unemployed have now been looking for at least 27 weeks.
In the year to September, US employers added 496,000 jobs. Health care and social assistance added 520,000, so the rest of the economy together lost jobs. Measured over 12 months, that has been true every month since June 2025. In payroll data back to 1990, the only comparable stretches came around recessions.
The September jobs report added 29,000 jobs and cut 60,000 from the two months before. Inside it, insurance carriers and the businesses around them lost jobs for the 11th month running. They now employ about 90,000 fewer people than in May 2025, a faster fall than in any comparable stretch in data going back to 1990. In the industry's own hiring survey, carriers keep saying the opposite.
In a large number of metropolitan areas the working-age population grew for one reason only. Employers and local governments are now doing arithmetic they had not previously had to do.