BLS Jobs Report Drama & 2026’s ‘Stable But Stuck’ Forecast

Additional Resources

• BLS September Jobs Report
• Indeed’s 2026 US Jobs & Hiring Trends Report
• The ZipRecruiter Job Seeker Confidence Survey

Transcript

Pete Newsome: 0:00

In today’s job market headlines, the jobs data is getting weaker, and in October it disappeared altogether. Today’s job report shows a labor market that’s slightly growing, at least in September, which is the only thing we have to work with. Because I should be talking about October data right now, but yesterday the Department of Labor announced the October jobs report has been canceled. They literally couldn’t collect household survey data, which means no October unemployment rate, no labor force participation, and no demographic detail. Those numbers are just gone. And that hasn’t happened since 2013. So here’s what we know for September. The U.S. economy added 119,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate increased slightly from 4.3% to 4.4%. The number of unemployed Americans remained at $7.6 million, and labor force participation was virtually unchanged.

0:56

Now there were some job gains in a few areas. Healthcare added 43,000 jobs, food services 37,000, but transportation and warehousing lost about 25,000. And of course, we have revisions, the small print at the bottom of every report lately. July and August were revised down by 33,000 jobs. That’s less than what was previously reported. And the employer survey for October did get collected at least, but that’s going to be held until the November report. So we’ll basically get a double release of sorts, October and November jobs data together, but again, no household information. And the next headline, job seekers are gloomy about the market, but more confident in themselves than ever, at least according to ZipRecruiter’s new JobSeeker Confidence survey.

1:44

It shows that job seeker confidence is down. Of course it did. And those who took the survey, well, they’re not optimistic heading into 2026 either. The expectations index, which is how people feel about the market over the next six months, dropped to its lowest level on record. At the same time, the preparedness index, which is how confident people are in their ability to search for a job and present themselves, that rose to a record high. There was a couple other things in the report that jumped out at me. One is that the share of people who are completely confident they’ll find a job in the next month, in the next month, keep in mind where we are right now. I mean, we’re heading into the holiday season where things slow down. That hit a record 27.3%. I love the confidence. I hope they’re successful, but I just don’t see that in the data. So the fact that that’s a record given everything that’s going on right now was definitely a surprise to me.

2:36

One stat in particular I found fascinating in a in a really disgusting way, and that’s that ghosting remains the number one pain point of job seekers. 40% say never hearing back is their biggest issue. Now, as a recruiter or someone who owns a staffing company specifically, I’ll tell you that not hearing back is more of a product of just the mass one-click apply scenario that we’re in right now, where there’s just it’s just not practical for many companies or just not equipped when they put up a job post to reply to every candidate, even if it’s an automated message, just a lot of companies don’t have that ability. So never hearing back from an application is one thing. But after an interview, in many cases, that is just insane to me that a company would interview someone and not give feedback.

3:27

Any percentage of at all of that happening is unacceptable. And I guess my question is this for anyone who’s listening, is that really happening? I would love feedback. I don’t, I know my peers and who own staffing companies that I compete against, even the ones I don’t like don’t operate that way. And so is this happening at the corporate level? Is it happened from working with third-party recruiters? If you have any insight in that, on that, I’d love to hear it. Please reach out to me and let me know if that’s happened to you. I’d love to explore that further. And today’s final headline: the 2026 job market probably won’t be a boom or a bust, just more of, well, this, what’s happening right now. That’s my takeaway from Indeed’s new jobs and hiring trends report. It tried to answer the question of where we’re heading, right? Is it going to be a cliff, a rebound, or complete stagnation?

4:15

And the short version of the report is just don’t expect big swings. Job postings, which of course is Indeed’s core business, showed a decline in nearly every sector throughout 2025. Otherwise, there really wasn’t much of interest in the report, to be completely frank. Uh, it talked about immigration, uh, tightening the labor supply. We know that’s happening, the federal cuts that are happening. But I think the most interesting thing, at least for me, was that it’s kind of a story of healthcare versus everything else right now. While healthcare is only 11.4% of overall employment, it accounted for 47.5% of all job growth in 2025. That is a crazy number. And healthcare postings on Indeed are still 22.5% above pre-COVID levels, while technology and retail and hospitality are way below the 2020 benchmark.

5:08

So that’s really a story, like I said, of healthcare versus everything else out there. And so the net of it is we are in what Indeed refers to as a low hire, low fire environment. Now that’s probably going to be the same in 2026. We’re just not expecting much of a change because there’s just nothing to indicate that there will be. Let’s end on a fun note. 40 years ago today, Microsoft released Windows 1.0. Maybe they called it 1.0 then. I wasn’t paying attention then like I am now, but it was its very first graphical operating environment. What a turning point in history for personal computing, software development, how businesses run, how everything operates. I wonder if anyone knew what was happening then.

5:54

If we have AI right now where there’s a lot of debate over how prevalent it will become, how much of an impact it will have on the workforce. I’m of course in the camp that says it’s going to have a drastic impact, the biggest thing to ever happen. But boy, not much has been bigger in evolution than what Microsoft released with Windows when it first came out. So I wonder if Bill Gates had any idea what an impact he was going to have. I’m sure he dreamed about it, but I don’t know if it was possible to foresee how big it would become. So there we are. Those are your job headlines for today. Thank you so much for listening. Please like, subscribe, and share with anyone you think might be interested. Look forward to talking soon.