The unemployment rate rose to 4.2% in September from 4.1% in August. A Bloomberg Opinion column argues that the jobs being added are mostly the lower-paying ones.
Below-average-paying industries added about 50,000 jobs in September, while above-average-paying industries shed about 4,000.
More than a fifth of Conference Board survey respondents said jobs are “hard to get,” the most in about a decade outside the pandemic.
Supervisory and non-production payrolls have been essentially flat for the past couple of years, while rank-and-file production roles have grown.
Health care has led job growth, with recent hiring skewing toward lower-paying roles like home health and personal care aides.
Average hourly earnings rose 3% year over year, while inflation was estimated at around 3.6%.
Upcoming elections and uncertainty over continuing tariff and trade negotiations, Middle East disruptions and increasing costs create a volatile environment for business. It becomes a high-stakes gamble.”
Read more via Bloomberg
Unemployment and layoffs are historically low, but Americans are still gloomy about the economy.
Inflation-adjusted pay was down from a year earlier for five straight months as of August.
Consumer prices were 3.4% higher in August than a year earlier, and are up about 30% since the end of 2019.
Glassdoor’s employee confidence index fell in September to the lowest level in its 10-year history.
Employers aren’t laying off many workers, but they aren’t hiring many either.
Entry-level college graduates are having an especially hard time finding work, and the ranks of the long-term unemployed are growing.
People are very concerned, either directly or indirectly, around what this is going to mean for their jobs.”
Read more via Emerson College Polling, Bloomberg
Challenger, Gray & Christmas expects retailers to add about 450,000 seasonal jobs in the fourth quarter, down from 461,500 last year. Only a handful of companies have shared their 2026 hiring plans so far.
Last year’s seasonal retail gain was the smallest since 2008, falling 15% below the 543,100 jobs added in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Challenger says retailers appear to be leaning on existing staff and on-demand pools instead of committing to large seasonal waves.
Spirit Halloween plans to hire more than 52,000 seasonal associates, and Michaels plans more than 10,000.
Amazon, which hired 250,000 seasonal workers in each of the last three years, has not announced its plans yet.
Retail employed 15.47 million workers in August, up about 63,000 from a year earlier.
Almost every hiring announcement we’ve seen in the last three years is smaller and more surgical than the pre-pandemic playbook.”
Read more via HR Dive
The Trump administration is suspending several companies from the Permanent Labor Certification Program, known as PERM, over alleged visa abuse. Vice President JD Vance singled out Microsoft.
PERM lets U.S. employers sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency, and the suspensions are indefinite.
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling named Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini among the suspended firms, and The New York Times reports Adobe is on the list.
Vance said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers in the past year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards.
Microsoft disputed some of the claims, saying 80% of its roughly 6,000 H-1B applications last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of existing employees.
The Labor Department’s inspector general also opened investigations into J-1 visa use at nine universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.
You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”
Read more via Bloomberg, The New York Times
The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects higher bills for households that heat with oil. About 3% of U.S. households rely on it, most of them in the Northeast.
Heating oil prices are projected to rise 30% this winter compared with a year ago.
Milder Northeast weather is expected to offset some of the impact on household bills.
Maine, which has the highest share of homes using heating oil, saw prices hit $5.96 a gallon on Sept. 28, nearly 80% more than a year earlier.
The EIA expects retail diesel to stay above $6 a gallon through October, before falling to $4.50 next year.
The agency projects Brent crude at $105 a barrel in the fourth quarter, $14 higher than last month’s forecast.
Military recruiting had its best year in 15 years in fiscal 2025, and experts say student loan benefits are part of the draw.
All five active-duty branches hit their full-year enlistment goals by July, months before the Sept. 30 deadline.
Recent college graduates ages 22 to 27 face an unemployment rate of about 5.7%, compared with 2.9% for all workers with a college degree.
The Army’s Loan Repayment Program repays up to $65,000 of a soldier’s federal student loans.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness pays the remaining balance for active-duty members after about 10 years of service.
About 2 in 3 Gen Z workers believe their employers should help pay down their student debt.
When the economy is hot and is booming, folks are less likely to join the military. And when the economy is poor and the labor market is cold, then the military becomes an excellent option.”
Twenty weeks in, the outbreak has grown from three health zones in one province to 64 zones across seven provinces. Responders say trained staff, more than money, is now the limiting factor.
About 254 health workers have been infected and 50 have died.
Staffing a single treatment center can require about 300 health workers, according to the World Health Organization.
International commitments have reached about $2.9 billion, but some workers have gone unpaid, contributing to strikes that have hindered parts of the response.
Kenya confirmed an Ebola infection on Tuesday in a person who had traveled from Congo.
Reported deaths fell 29% in September from August.
There is a limit to how quickly experienced Ebola staff can be multiplied.”
A lab worker in Siberia died of pneumonia of unknown cause, and nearly 200 people who had contact with her are under observation. Russia says testing has not linked her death to plague.
The CDC says it has measures in place to identify and assess travelers from the affected region, which sends roughly 200 travelers to the U.S. a year.
A health station has been set up at JFK Airport in New York City, where most flights from the region arrive.
There are no do-not-board orders tied to the case so far.
The State Department has issued a do-not-travel alert for Russia.
The World Health Organization says it does not yet have enough information from Russia to conduct a full risk assessment.
We are very confident that the threat to the United States is extremely low.”
Read more via Axios, ABC News, Forbes
Australia: Job vacancies fell 0.9% in the three months to August, following a 2.2% drop in the prior three months, to 325,000. Wholesale trade vacancies fell 18% and professional, scientific and technical services fell 17.3%, while retail trade rose 24.5%. (Xinhua News Agency)
Ireland: Job openings were down 4.8% from a year earlier in the third quarter, and up 0.2% from the previous quarter, according to recruiter Morgan McKinley. Jobseeker registrations jumped 51% year over year, though the firm says unemployment hasn’t risen and that many people are looking while staying in their current jobs. (RTE)
Malaysia: The unemployment rate dipped to 2.9% in August from 3.0% in July, and the number of employed people rose 0.2% to 16.87 million. The labor force participation rate edged up to 71.0%. (Staffing Industry Analysts)
Singapore: The government is piloting FirstDate, a state-built dating platform open only to public officers ages 21 to 35, as part of its effort to address a fertility rate of 0.87 children per woman. The app gives each user one match per cycle and 72 hours to decide whether to connect. (CNBC)
