December 2025 Employment Situation — 2026-01-09

Both total nonfarm payroll employment (+50,000) and the unemployment rate (4.4 percent) changed little in December, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment continued to trend up in food services and drinking places, health care, and social assistance. Retail trade lost jobs. This news release presents statistics from two monthly surveys. The household survey measures labor force status, including unemployment, by demographic characteristics. The establishment survey measures nonfarm employment, hours, and earnings by industry. For more information about the concepts and statistical methodology used in these two surveys, see the Technical Note. Both the unemployment rate, at 4.4 percent, and the number of unemployed people, at 7.5 million, changed little in December. (See table A-1.) Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.9 percent), adult women (3.9 percent), teenagers (15.7 percent), Whites (3.8 percent), Blacks (7.5 percent), Asians (3.6 percent), and Hispanics (4.9 percent) showed little or no change over the month.