{"id":121403,"date":"2025-08-05T17:16:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T17:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/121403\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T17:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T17:16:11","slug":"official-jobs-numbers-show-its-a-bad-time-to-be-looking-for-work-unless-youre-in-this-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/121403\/","title":{"rendered":"Official jobs numbers show it’s a bad time to be looking for work\u2014unless you’re in this field"},"content":{"rendered":"

Official economic data is finally catching up to the fact that Americans have been feeling lousy<\/a> about the job market<\/a> for months<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The U.S. economy added<\/a> just 73,000 nonfarm jobs<\/a> in July, according to the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s below market expectations and the roughly 80,000 benchmark for a healthy economy to support the growing population, says Laura Ullrich, Indeed’s director of economic research for North America.<\/p>\n

A lot of economists are also paying attention to the latest report, which helps show a monthly picture of where jobs are growing and shrinking, because it downwardly revised its May and June numbers to show the economy added just 33,000 jobs over the two-month period, compared to earlier estimates of 291,000 jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Following the release of Friday’s jobs report, President Donald Trump fired BLS commissioner<\/a> Erika McEntarfer, <\/strong>suggesting without evidence<\/a> that the weaker-than-expected report had been “rigged” by federal workers bent on sabotaging the president.<\/p>\n

Revisions are a normal part<\/a> of the data collection process, and estimates move up or down to become more precise with additional payroll data up to several months after a report releases, Ullrich tells CNBC Make It.<\/p>\n

But “these revisions took the prior two jobs report [in May and June] from a range where they looked like pretty healthy job reports to where they looked quite weak,” Ullrich says.<\/p>\n

The latest numbers confirm the U.S. economy is slowing sharply<\/a>, experts say. Here’s what else job seekers should know about the state of the labor market:<\/p>\n

Health-care jobs are propping up job growth<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the year, the labor market was primarily held up by jobs across three sectors: health care and social assistance, leisure and hospitality, and government hiring.<\/p>\n

Leisure and hospitality job creation is down, driven in part by business pullback amid economic uncertainty, while government hiring is down following the Trump administration’s work to slash the size<\/a> of the federal government.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, health care and social assistance have accounted for 48.8% of total employment growth over the last year, despite making up just 14.6% of the economy, Ullrich says.<\/p>\n

New jobs span nurses, nurses assistants, patient care techs, home health aides and other roles. “Hospitals employ just about everybody,” Ullrich says.<\/p>\n

Hospitals added 196,000 jobs over the last year, which is 3.5% growth and “pretty strong,” Ullrich says. Home health care services grew by 56,900 jobs, or 3.2%, over the last year.<\/p>\n

A majority, 78.6%, of employees in this subsector are women, meaning 35% of all employment growth in the U.S. over the past year has been among women in health care and social assistance, Ullrich says.<\/p>\n

Experts have long predicted the strength around health-care jobs to take care of an aging Baby Boomer population.<\/p>\n

“Growth in that sector has remained robust,” Ullrich says.<\/p>\n

Hiring in multiple high-growth sectors is sluggish<\/p>\n

Other typically high-growth and high-paying sectors are shedding jobs, including professional and business services, manufacturing and government, which all lost more than 10,000 jobs each over the last month.<\/p>\n

Some experts have dubbed the current environment a “white collar recession<\/a>” among office workers. “Business and professional services added a ton of jobs in the post-pandemic period, but over the past year or so, it’s been relatively soft,” Ullrich says.<\/p>\n

As for manufacturing, it’s hard to say what combination of factors is keeping jobs down, whether it’s new global tariffs<\/a>, changing consumer habits, or overall economic uncertainty, among other things, Ullrich says.<\/p>\n

Ullrich says the latest jobs numbers are just one more data point that add to a broader challenging economic picture, which could impact business plans and consumer spending.<\/p>\n

“It’s been clear through multiple sources of data, including this jobs report, that the economy is slowing down a bit, and so that can certainly impact sentiment,” she says.<\/p>\n

Another troubling sign: The number of people who’ve been unemployed for 27-plus weeks increased by 179,000 people to 1.8 million in July, according to BLS data. Long-term unemployed people make up roughly 1 in 4 people looking for a job right now.<\/p>\n

Job postings are down on Indeed, Ullrich says, and economists have seen a disequilibrium in terms of what skills people have and what sectors are hiring.<\/p>\n

Currently, “if you are somebody that’s trying to find a job in manufacturing or business and professional services, it’s likely a pretty tough job market right now,” Ullrich says. “If you’re graduating with a nursing degree, I feel pretty confident that there’s someone out there looking to hire you.”<\/p>\n

Want to stand out, grow your network, and get more job opportunities?<\/strong>\u00a0Sign up for Smarter by CNBC Make It’s new online course,\u00a0How to Build a Standout Personal Brand: Online, In Person, and At Work<\/a>. Learn from three expert instructors how to showcase your skills, build a stellar reputation, and create a digital presence that AI can’t replicate.<\/p>\n

Plus,\u00a0sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter<\/a>\u00a0to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life, and\u00a0request to join our exclusive community on LinkedIn<\/a>\u00a0to connect with experts and peers.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Official economic data is finally catching up to the fact that Americans have been feeling lousy about the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":121404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,16778,79,605,420,15876,14230,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-121403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-careers","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-job-hunting","12":"tag-jobs","13":"tag-layoffs","14":"tag-u-s-economy","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114977294421788794","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}