November 20, 2025
It’s late and it’s complicated. I could say that about a lot of things – but in the case of this video I’m talking about the September jobs report that we just got today– which is now going to make the federal reserve’s decision about whether to cut interest rates for you even more difficult.
So what’s going on? Well – finally this morning the federal government released the jobs report for September – which was supposed to be released almost seven weeks ago. Of course it wasn’t because of the government shutdown. But now that we have it what does it say?
Well – I can give you the good news? Or I can give you the bad news. Let’s start with the good news. According to this report – after a rough summer – it looks like employers created more jobs in September. The report says 119-thousand jobs were added to employer payrolls in September compared to August of 2025. Those new jobs were added mostly in the health care (+43,000) and in the food services sector. (+37,000)
The bad news is – the unemployment rate hit a number we haven’t seen in four years. In September, the unemployment rate was 4.4% which is up from 4.1% in August. That means a lot more people are out of work and the unemployment rate is trending up. And keep in mind this data is late – so we really don’t have an official gauge about who became unemployed in October or November yet.
The other bad news is – the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the jobs numbers from the summer. Now I reported that they were already bad – but now according to the most recent and more accurate data – the Bureau of Labor Statistics says us employers created far fewer jobs than were first reported.
Here we are in September where employers added 119,000 jobs. And we already knew that we lost 13,000 jobs in June which was first time the US economy lost jobs in years. And today we learned that instead of the 79,000 jobs we thought were added in July – the number was actually 72,000. And perhaps most concerning is the revision for August. We originally thought employers added 22,000 jobs – which was really low…but now that more data has come in – we learned that no. Actually 26,000 fewer jobs were added to payrolls in August – leaving August at -4,000 jobs created. That is the second month of actual job loss.
So – how is this going to impact the federal reserve’s decision about interest rates? Well – we know the fed lowered interest rates last month because the chairman said they were worried about the weakening job market. Today we learned there are now two numbers that are contradicting each other. We learned 119,000 jobs were added in September that’s a solid bounce back – especially after the horrible August number. That number shows that the jobs market is getting better – so that would give the Fed evidence that there’s no need to cut interest rates anymore. But we also learned September unemployment reached a four year high meaning more people are out of work. That number gives the fed evidence that maybe the jobs market isn’t as strong as they think – so they may need to make another interest rate cut to make sure the job market doesn’t fall out.
We will learn what they decide when they meet in December.
Read the BLS report for September here.
