Added 17,000 jobs, about half its 33,000 monthly average over the past year. Doctors' offices and outpatient care added 13,000 and hospitals 12,000, while nursing and residential care lost 9,000. Still the most dependable hirer in the report, but check which part of it you're applying to.
CompTIA counted 349,821 active tech postings asking for AI skills in September, up 32,327 from August. Postings with an actual AI or machine-learning job title number 13,636, nearly triple the May 2024 level. Note the ratio: for every posting with AI in the title, about 25 others just expect you to have the skill.
No fresh monthly number, and the read hasn't changed. BLS projects 29% growth for information security analysts over the decade. The catch is the same as last month: alert triage and log review, the old entry-level work, are being automated, and employers want cloud, identity and AI-risk skills in a single hire.
Up 9,000 in September and 72,000 from its recent low. Machinery and plastics and rubber products each added about 5,000. The factory workweek held at 40.6 hours with 3.0 hours of overtime, which is what steady looks like.
Federal payrolls slipped another 1,000 in September, to 2.68 million. No monthly figure isolates contractors, so this one stays a judgment call: defense-funded work, and anything that needs a clearance, remains steadier than the agencies themselves.
Utilities added 500 jobs, on top of gains in July and August. Mining and logging gave back 2,000. Small numbers either way. Grid work moves slowly and can't be done from somewhere else, and that is most of its appeal.
August's 44,000-job gain became a 17,000 loss in September: local government down 13,000, state down 3,000. Schools weren't the story this time, since local education was off only 1,800. Downgraded from warm.
Up 10,000, nearly all of it restaurants and bars (+10,800), while hotels lost 3,600. After a 38,000 loss in July and a 37,000 gain in August, the sector is swinging month to month with no trend to bet on. Downgraded from warm.
Down 7,000 in September after losses of 9,000 and 10,000 the two months before, and 129,000 below the May 2025 peak. That stopped being “flat” a while ago. Downgraded from cool.
The strangest numbers in the report. New tech postings hit 272,040, and software developers led the list with 47,598, up 8.3% in a month. Meanwhile tech-sector payrolls fell by about 10,350, computer systems design lost 4,400, and tech unemployment rose to 3.3% from 3.1%. Plenty of ads. Fewer paychecks.
The information sector lost 10,000 jobs in September on top of a revised 18,000 in August. Publishing was down 4,000 and broadcasting 3,000. Same contraction, new month.
Retail added 5,800 jobs, which about cancels August's 5,100 loss. The forward signal is worse: employers announced 90,787 planned hires in September, down 23% from a year ago, in the month when holiday hiring plans usually show up.
▲ rate is up 0.3 point or more from a year ago. ▼ down 0.3 or more. No mark means it barely moved.
South Dakota at 2.0% and North Dakota at 2.2%, the two lowest rates in the country again. Nebraska sits at 2.9%, Wyoming at 3.0%, Iowa and Montana at 3.2%. Small labor forces, few surprises.
Vermont at 2.6%, New Hampshire at 2.8%, Maine at 3.2%: third, fifth and tied for eighth lowest in the nation. Tight and quiet.
Three neighbors, three stories. Rhode Island is down to 3.7% from 4.3% a year ago. Massachusetts is at 4.3%, a touch above the national rate. Connecticut is at 5.1%, a full point higher than last August.
Ohio hit 3.3%, which BLS calls a new low for the series, and Indiana matches it. Wisconsin is at 3.2%, and Pennsylvania at 3.7% after a 0.2-point drop in August. Michigan at 5.0% and Illinois at 4.7% didn't get the memo.
New Jersey and New York both at 4.3%, Maryland at 4.1%, Delaware at 4.7%. New Jersey's rate is 1.2 points lower than a year ago, the biggest drop in the country, and it deserves the second look it gets below.
DC still has the highest rate in the nation at 5.7%, and it is the only jurisdiction where payroll employment fell over the year: down 27,000 jobs, or 3.6%. Virginia is at 3.6%, up from 3.3% a year ago.
Georgia at 3.2%; Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee at 3.4%; North Carolina at 3.5%. Mississippi and Louisiana each fell 0.2 points in August. Florida is the outlier at 4.5%, half a point above last year.
Texas at 4.4%, Oklahoma 4.3%, New Mexico 4.7%, Nevada 4.8%, Arizona 4.9%. All but Nevada are higher than a year ago. Texas also added more payroll jobs over the year than any other state, 159,400. Both things are true at once.
California and Oregon at 5.1%, Washington at 4.9%. California added 39,400 jobs in August, the biggest gain of any state, and is still tied for the highest unemployment rate of any state.
From 4.1% to 5.1% in a year, the biggest increase in the country. The state labor department attributes the rise mostly to new entrants to the job market rather than layoffs, and private-sector payrolls are at a record. Believe it about halfway: the same report shows the labor force shrinking by 4,100 in August and describes employers as cautious about hiring.
From 3.4% to 4.3% in twelve months, the second-biggest increase. The state's own county report shows it happening everywhere at once: rates are higher than a year ago in 72 of 77 counties. No single plant or industry explains that. It's broad, and broad doesn't make headlines.
Down 1.2 points in a year, the biggest drop of any state. Before anyone books a moving van: the state's own figures show payroll employment down 9,900 over the same twelve months. A falling rate next to falling payrolls usually means fewer people counted as looking, or more of them working across the river. Neither is a hiring boom.
From 4.4% to 3.3% in a year, a new low for the series by the Bureau's count. Nothing in the release explains a drop that size, and we won't invent a reason. A rate can fall because people found work or because they stopped looking. September's state numbers on October 20 are the next check.
The rate is down to 5.7% from 6.5% a year ago, and payrolls are down 27,000 over the same year. Both can be true when people leave the labor force or leave town. It is still the highest rate in the country.
September's headline needs no decoding: 29,000 jobs, against forecasts of roughly 90,000, and unemployment up a tenth to 4.2 percent. Then the Bureau went back and marked down the summer. August's 162,000, the number this report called the best month in five, is now 133,000. July's small gain is now a loss of 10,000. Sixty thousand jobs that existed on paper a month ago no longer do.
The two surveys are telling different stories, which is worth knowing before anyone panics or celebrates. The household survey, the one that asks people, had a decent month: 485,000 more in the labor force, 406,000 more employed, participation up to 61.8 percent, the broad U-6 rate down to 7.6. The employer survey, the one that counts paychecks, found almost nothing. When they disagree, the payroll count is usually the steadier of the two, and its three-month average is now 51,000 jobs.
Where the jobs were, briefly. Health care added 17,000, about half its usual pace, and nursing homes and residential care lost 9,000. Construction added 11,000 and manufacturing 9,000. Government shed 17,000, most of it local. Finance lost 7,000 and sits 129,000 below its May 2025 peak. Information lost another 10,000. Temporary help, a line employers tend to cut first, fell by 10,900.
What holds the picture together is in JOLTS and the layoff counts: nobody is firing, and nobody is hiring. Challenger logged 43,281 announced cuts, the fewest for a September since 2022. JOLTS has layoffs at 1.6 million, a 1.0 percent rate. Hires are stuck at 5.2 million and quits at 3.1 million, because people with jobs are keeping them. That's comfortable if you're inside. If you're outside, it explains why 27.1 percent of the unemployed have been looking for six months or more, up from 23.6 percent a year ago. The door isn't slamming. It just isn't opening.
Tech supplied the month's best illustration. CompTIA counted 625,633 active tech postings, the most in more than three years, and 349,821 of them ask for AI skills. In the same month, tech-sector payrolls fell by about 10,350 and the tech unemployment rate rose to 3.3 percent from 3.1. A posting is an intention. A payroll is a fact. This month the gap between them was wide enough to drive a recruiter through.
A low-hire, low-fire market rewards people who are already employed and specific about what they do. If you have a job, September is an argument against leaving it on a hunch. If you're looking, the numbers say the search will probably run long, so plan the money and the stamina for that. Point the resume at what is still adding people: outpatient care and hospitals, the trades, manufacturing, and the strip of tech that wants AI skills. And treat a job posting as what it is, an ad, until somebody calls you back.
| Group | Unemployment Rate |
|---|---|
| All workers, 16+ | 4.2% |
| Adult men (20+) | 3.9% |
| Adult women (20+) | 3.6% |
| Teenagers (16–19) | 14.5% |
| White | 3.6% |
| Black or African American | 7.0% |
| Asian | 2.9% |
| Hispanic or Latino | 4.7% |
| Measure | August 2026 | Read |
|---|---|---|
| Job openings | 7.1M | Little changed, and down from 7.3M in July. A 4.3% openings rate |
| Hires | 5.2M | Little changed. The front door hasn't opened any wider |
| Total separations | 5.1M | Unchanged |
| Quits | 3.1M | Unchanged at a 1.9% rate. People with jobs are staying put |
| Layoffs & discharges | 1.6M | Little changed at a 1.0% rate. Still a freeze, and still no firing spree |
| # | Title | Read |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Registered Nurse | Still the most reliable line item in American hiring. Outpatient care and hospitals added 25,000 jobs between them in September. |
| 2 | AI/ML Engineer | Low raw volume, at 13,636 active postings, and the highest pay premium on the list. The skill is in far more demand than the title. |
| 3 | Cybersecurity Engineer | BLS projects 29% growth over the decade; the entry ramp keeps narrowing even as demand grows. |
| 4 | Medical Assistant | Rides the same demographic wave as RN, with a lower barrier to entry. |
| 5 | Retail Sales Associate | Huge volume, high churn, and announced holiday hiring plans are running thin. |
| 6 | Customer Service Representative | Same story as retail. Less “growth” than “the last person quit.” |
| 7 | Licensed Practical Nurse | The volume version of the RN story, one rung down. Mind the setting: nursing and residential care lost 9,000 jobs in September. |
| 8 | Administrative Assistant | Heavy volume, but the role AI tooling is quietly hollowing out first. |
| 9 | Store Manager | Real demand, real ceiling. Worth pursuing if retail is already your lane. |
| 10 | Product Manager | Still posting heavy, increasingly folded into hybrid roles. Read closely. |