January 9, 2026
You have been talking about how hard it is to find a job in this country throughout 2025. And now I have the numbers to prove you’re right. 2025 was the worst year for hiring since the pandemic.
But there is a tish of good news. Certainly not great news but some good news to report after the federal government released the December jobs report this morning. But that tish of good news may give the federal reserve a reason to not lower interest rates at the end of the month.
Today’s report found – employers only added 50,000 jobs to their payrolls in December. That is lower than expected. And employers added even *fewer* jobs in *both* the months of October and November than the government originally reported.
So here is the chart of 2025. Here is the December number of 50,000 jobs added. You can also see three months of job losses. October was especially bad. But according to the bureau of labor statistics – October was much worse…the market actually lost 173,000 jobs. And in November instead of adding 64,000 jobs – employers only added 56,000 jobs.
That is the worst year for hiring as I mentioned since the pandemic. I think it’s also important to point out that the manufacturing sector had a rough 2025. December was the eighth straight month of job losses.
Here are the numbers — when you look at all of 2025 you can clearly see the United States has steadily lost manufacturing jobs since president trump trump’s liberation day tariff announcement in April. Now when you pull back and look at manufacturing jobs for the last three year – you can see it’s been a rough go for manufacturing for years – and that’s why President Trump promised to bring manufacturing back. But we can see in 2025 that the complete opposite was happening.
On the flip side the sector that grew the most in 2025 were mostly in the healthcare industry – but also jobs in the bar and restaurant sector grew steadily in 2025.
So what is this tish of good news? I’m warning you – it’s not much – but today’s report found the unemployment rate in December dropped by a fraction. Instead of the 4.5% unemployment rate we saw in November in December the unemployment rate was 4.4%. I told you it’s not much – but it is a little better.
But that little bit of good news about unemployment may give the federal reserve a reason *not* to cut interest rates at the end of January because it shows that employers aren’t firing people. But on the flip side – the fed may also see the clear numbers that prove employers aren’t hiring as a reason *to* cut interest rates.
Read the December Jobs report here.
