Jobs report shows a historic stall in hiring last year

Construction workers install finishing touches at a Scout Motors electric vehicle assembly plant in Blythewood, S.C., in February. Health care and construction hiring helped boost January jobs, but downward revisions for the whole of 2025 marked the lowest increase in U.S. jobs outside a recession since 2003. (Jessica Holdman / SC Daily Gazette)

By Tim Henderson

Stateline

U.S. jobs increased by 130,000 in January, buoyed by hires in health care, social assistance and construction.

But in another sign of anemic hiring last year, estimates for 2025 were revised down by more than a million jobs to a level of low growth rarely seen outside of recessions. 

The revisions show the United States added only 181,000 jobs last year — the first year of the new Trump administration — one of the lowest increases ever outside recessions. 

Jobs dropped in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and in 2008-2009 in the Great Recession, but otherwise the last time was a lower increase in jobs was in 2003, when they rose 124,000 after two years of decreases, during a period labeled a “jobless recovery” by economists.  

Economist Claudia Sahm, who had predicted 2025 would be “a year without jobs, but no recession” before the annual revisions based on more complete data, said Wednesday that “the downward revisions are huge” in an X post.

The new revisions changed the most for January 2025, which went from a gain of 111,000 to a loss of 48,000 jobs. Only one month, October, saw an upward revision: A reported loss of 173,000 jobs was trimmed to a loss of 140,000 jobs. There are now four months of job losses reported last year, up from three. 

Overall, the number of total U.S. jobs at the end of the year was revised down by 1,029,000, from a little more than 159.5 million to a little less than 158.5 million. 

State by state jobs estimates for January are not yet available. 

There have been about 29,000 layoffs announced so far in 2026,according to notices tracked by WARN Tracker. They include 7,705 layoffs in California, 6,109 in New Jersey, 3,999 in Pennsylvania, 3,483 in Washington state and 2,607 in Texas. 

• Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org. Stateline is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization