Jobs report - unemployment up, and lots of weak spots

We knew the US jobs report that was coming out today was going to be an odd one. Not only would it include the first look at some October and all November data, and the effects of the US government shutdown of that time period, it also would let us know more about how many federal employees took the DOGE buyouts throughout 2025.

And while the news wasn’t expected to be good, what was released indicates the US jobs market is in quite a bad place.

Unemployment rose to a four-year high of 4.6% in November, and the economy added 64,000 jobs last month, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Tuesday.

Last month’s job gains, which came in higher than expected, followed a 105,000-job loss for October, according to a jobs report that was one of the most atypical in recent history….

In October, the federal employment sector had a reported loss of 162,000 jobs, a result of the “fork in the road” deferred resignations from the Department of Government Efficiency that were put in place earlier this year but were effective as of September 30.

Economists were looking for a net gain of 40,000 jobs for November and for the unemployment rate to stay unchanged from its September rate of 4.4%, according to FactSet.

You go into the release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the jobs market, and it has a lot of good clarifications and explanations. Including a recap of why so many Federal employees “lost” jobs in October.

Federal government employment continued to decrease in November (-6,000). This follows a sharp decline of 162,000 in October, as some federal employees who accepted a deferred resignation offer came off federal payrolls. Federal government employment is down by 271,000 since reaching a peak in January. (Federal employees on furlough during the government shutdown were counted as employed in the establishment survey because they received pay, even if later than usual, for the pay period that included the 12th of the month. Employees on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay are counted as employed in the establishment survey.)

Basically, many of these people have been off the job for several months, but were still getting paid until the Fiscal Year ended on Sept. 30, so they didn't show up in the BLS numbers until today.

Those losses finally showing up in the numbers led to this dreck from the US Number 2.

Q: The unemployment rate currently stands at 4.6%, the highest since the pandemic. So how do you inspire companies to hire people? JD VANCE: You're talking about government sector jobs. We want to fire bureaucrats and hire these great Americans out here.

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) December 16, 2025 at 11:07 AM

I dunno. I'd much rather have a government run by faceless bureaucrats who know stuff and honestly deal with problems over lying political grifters like JV Vance and RFK Jr. Call me an idealist.

(Additional note – as always, FUCK ULINE.)

What JD “I’m creating stories” Vance didn’t mention was the fact that November’s unemployment would have been even higher had the government shutdown gone on for another week. BLS made that note when discussing the household survey that determines the unemployment rate.

In the household survey, people are considered employed if they did any work at all for pay or profit during the survey reference week or were temporarily absent from their jobs or businesses. The lapse in appropriations lasted from October 1 through November 12, 2025. The survey reference week was November 9 through 15. Because the government reopened before the end of the November reference week, federal government workers were counted as employed in the household survey.

So it could likely have been an even higher jump in unemployment beyond the 0.5% increase we've had in the last 5 months? That's not good at all, especially since we saw similar runups in unemployment right before the recessions that started in 2001 and 2007.

And someone should tell JV that it wasn’t all peaches in the private sector either. The average of private sector growth for October and November was no different than the 60,000 a month over-estimate that Fed Chair Jerome Powell says is happening in the BLS data. Manufacturing especially continued to hurt, losing a total of 19,000 jobs between August and November, with 11,000 jobs lost in the auto manufacturing sector. Huh, maybe Trump/GOP shouldn’t have cut off the Biden-era boosts to electric vehicle manufacturing, eh?

In fact, the BLS says there were only three areas that saw significant job growth in November.

In November, health care added 46,000 jobs, in line with the average monthly gain of 39,000 over the prior 12 months. Over the month, job gains occurred in ambulatory health care services (+24,000), hospitals (+11,000), and nursing and residential care facilities (+11,000).

Construction employment grew by 28,000 in November, as nonresidential specialty trade contractors added 19,000 jobs. Construction employment had changed little over the prior 12 months.

Employment in social assistance continued to trend up in November (+18,000), primarily in individual and family services (+13,000).

Take those two sectors away, and the US lost 23,000 jobs last month.

And even the growth in those 3 sectors comes with asterisks. Construction was only a “gain” because warm mid-November weather limited seasonal layoffs to 67,000 vs October. Also, do you think health care and social assistance is going to keep hiring as millions more Americans go without health insurance and doctor’s visits, or lose access to social services due to other Trump/GOP austerity and other needs costing more? Me neither.

Lastly, the rise from 4.4% to 4.6% in the “main” unemployment rate between September and November underplays that other measures showed other measures of unemployment going even higher.

Look at broader measures of unemployment—including people who want a job but aren't in the labor force or who are working part-time but want a full-time job—and the labor market is in the worst place since the pandemic

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— Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 (@josephpolitano.bsky.social) December 16, 2025 at 7:52 AM

See that green field? That reflects the fact that the number of Americans listed as having to settle for part-time work for economic reasons jumped by 909,000 over those 2 months, to nearly 5.5 million. This helped raise the U-6 unemployment rate (which includes those Americans) from 8.0% in September to 8.7% in November - the highest non-COVID level since early 2017.

So things really did get worse in the jobs market in October and November, both inside the federal government, and in a lot of parts of the private sector. And no matter how low the unemployment claims stay, it sure isn’t a good situation for workers – and that’s before we account for 12-month growth in average hourly wages in the private sector hitting a post-COVID low at 3.5%.

Well, some people did think Trump was going to bring back the economy of 2019. But I don't think lower levels of wage growth was what they had in mind, and now prices rising by a higher amount on top of that.

Fed officials must have been assuming the jobs numbers would be bad when they cut rates last week, and this is the type of jobs market you’d see in an economy that’s about ready to tip over into recession. Now the question becomes whether the Trump Administration messes with the inflation numbers later this week to make them lower than the reality Americans are dealing with, to try to convince the Fed that they need to keep lowering rates.

After all, there’s not much in the real economy to keep things going these days. So why not try to further inflate the Bubble of AI BS that is one of the few things that are keeping things above water these days?