Independent analysis of work and the economy
Crisp, clear workforce insights on who is hiring, who is cutting, what people are being paid, and how much of the AI story holds up, delivered straight to your inbox every week. Short enough to read with a coffee, solid enough to quote in a meeting. For anyone who wants to dig deeper into the numbers, we have the Data Room.
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The evidence
All of it public data, rebuilt every morning, every source named. Open the Data Room and check our work
A look at the Data Room
Subscribers get a question box on top of every dataset. It answers from the data itself, names the source and the period behind every figure, and says so plainly when the data cannot answer. Here is a real one, played back.
Ask the data
Which industries are adding jobs right now?
Reading the datasets…
Which industries are adding jobs right now?
In the year to July 2026, two industries carry almost all of the growth. Private education and health is up 2.0 percent, to 27.96 million jobs. Construction is up 1.0 percent, to 8.34 million. Professional and business services and leisure and hospitality each added 0.5 percent.
Everything else is flat or shrinking. Information is down 2.8 percent, a loss of 81,000 jobs. Government is down 1.3 percent, financial activities down 1.2 percent.
Total nonfarm employment is up 0.2 percent over the same year. That is growth, but it is concentrated rather than broad.
Source: BLS Current Employment Statistics, all employees, seasonally adjusted, through July 2026.
The analysis
Every week we take one thing everyone is saying about work and find out whether it holds up.
Read the latest issueThe data
The datasets behind the analysis: layoffs, hiring, pay, AI adoption and more, rebuilt every morning. Ask a question in plain English or read the rows yourself. Every source named, every gap flagged, so you can check our work.
Open the Data RoomPayrolls rose 162,000 in August, more than five times the trailing average. BLS publishes a confidence interval of plus or minus 122,000 on that figure, and twelve recent reports have already slipped below the line it draws.
Uber's memo describes a flattening that has been running nationally since January 2025. Professional and business services now has 95,000 fewer supervisors and 133,000 more people who supervise nobody. On net the sector grew, which is exactly why no layoff count has registered any of it.
Federal employment fell by 252,000 over twelve months. Yet the loss does not appear in any state's unemployment rate, and the District of Columbia's actually fell. Why? Because a person who retires instead of looking for work is not counted as unemployed.
The US unemployment rate fell to 4.1% while the share of Americans with a job also fell. Both are true, and what explains them is not weakness. The entire decline in participation is people over 55.
The quits rate has been between 1.9% and 2.2% for 31 straight months. Hiring is well below its 2019 pace and layoffs are too. A market where nobody is fired and nobody moves is not a strong one.
Payrolls fell 23,000. One sector supplied all of the past year of growth. Quits have not moved in 31 months. The monthly roundup of what the public data said in July, and what it says together.
The economy added 316,000 jobs over the past year. Health care and social assistance added 552,000. Everything else, on net, is 236,000 jobs smaller than it was last July.
Total compensation cost rose 3.3% over the year to June. Wages rose 3.1%, benefits 3.8%. The gap has widened for three straight quarters, and the fastest growing part of the package is the part employees never see.
Sixteen readings, a straight line, and no acceleration. The more interesting number is what businesses say they expect six months from now, because for the first time it is lower than what they just delivered.
Microsoft cut 4,800 people and got called disciplined. JPMorgan added people, posted the biggest profit in US banking history, and got questioned about its costs. The market is sorting companies on a new factor, and it's getting it half wrong.
For 250 years America grew by adding. The 2026 playbook is to grow profits by subtracting, cutting labor now to harvest margin later, and the market may be paying for a one-time cut as if it compounds.
Low unemployment is doing two jobs at once: keeping the Fed hawkish, and giving companies cover to cut white-collar workers for margin. Both lean on the one number that breaks last.
