September 2025 Employment Situation — 2025-11-20

Total nonfarm payroll employment edged up by 119,000 in September but has shown little change since April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The unemployment rate, at 4.4 percent, changed little in September. Employment continued to trend up in health care, food services and drinking places, and social assistance. Job losses occurred in transportation and warehousing and in federal government. 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 7.6 million, changed little in September. These measures are higher than a year earlier, when the jobless rate was 4.1 percent, and the number of unemployed people was 6.9 million.