Even before war in the Middle East broke out and gas wasn't averaging $4 a gallon nationwide, the US jobs market was not in a good place. The Bureau of Labor Statistics told us at the start of March that
US jobs declined by 92,000 in February, and it wrapped up the month by saying that
the percentage of Americans getting new jobs was at its lowest non-COVID levels in 15 years. US hires plunged to 4.8 million last month, down by 387,000 from a year ago, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Outside of the pandemic, the hiring rate hasn’t been this low since the beginning of 2011.
“3.1% is not only comparable to the COVID low point - it's also comparable to late 2009 and early 2010, when the unemployment rate was around 10%,” Guy Berger, director of economic research at the Burning Glass Institute, wrote on X. “Hiring was ice cold in February.
It’s also the first non-COVID month where there have been fewer than 5 million hires in America since 2014.
Another sign of a worsening market for workers is that quits in February were at their lowest non-COVID amount since 2016. Other than some “Trump is back in office” optimism that happened this time last year, we’ve seen a general decline in quits since the peak of the Great Resignation of 2021-22.
On the other side, while February was the first time in four months that we had over 1.6 million private sector layoffs, it’s still below what we had in most of 2025.
Which means the coming months will be important to see if the amount of layoffs go back up, and continue the slow rise that we saw between 2022 and 2025, or if we stay at a lower number for 2026.
I will say that ADP has been showing better jobs numbers than the US Department of Labor recently, as
ADP's report on Wednesday said overall job growth was solid for March, although heavily concentrated in a handful of sectors.
Private sector employment growth was a bit better than expected in March, but health care and construction continued to provide nearly all the momentum, payrolls processing company ADP reported Wednesday.
Job growth totaled 62,000 for the month, down just 4,000 from February’s upwardly revised level but above the Dow Jones consensus for 39,000. ADP’s report does not include government employees.
Like February’s report, two sectors essentially provided all the gains.
Education and health services contributed 58,000 — identical to the February total — while construction added 30,000. The health services total was held back in the prior month due to a since-resolved strike at Kaiser Permanente that sidelined more than 30,000 workers in Hawaii and California.
I'd be cautious about the construction number, as it could have simply been a head start due to warmer-than-average weather in the month. But you look at the overall trend in the ADP report over the last few months, and it's not that bad, with growth averaging around 54,000 jobs a month since June.
That may give a bit of hope for a March jobs report that likely won't be heavily impacted by gas prices spiking up in that month. Many sectors are still flatlining, and actual hiring continues to be slow, but because layoffs are still historically low, we aren't in a recessionary situation. Of course, if consumers stop spending in other areas because gas prices start taking a whole lot of money out of their wallets, it won't take much for the positive ADP numbers to go back to negative very quickly.
