Key Takeaways
- The U.S. economy probably lost jobs in October and then added just 50,000 in November, pushing the unemployment rate to 4.5%, according to forecasts.
- Tuesday’s long-delayed report, held up by the government shutdown, will combine data from both October and November.
- The data is likely to show a jobs slowdown driven by tariffs, federal worker layoffs, the immigration crackdown, and other economic headwinds.
A long-delayed hiring report will probably confirm the job market kept cooling this autumn.
On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to release data showing that U.S. employers added 50,000 jobs in November and that the unemployment rate rose to 4.5%, its highest level since 2021, according to a survey of forecasters by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. The report will also likely show the economy lost jobs in October due to mass layoffs of federal workers, several economists said.
These findings would underscore the Fed’s concerns that the job market has slowed sharply and risks a serious surge in unemployment. The Fed is tasked by Congress with a dual mandate to keep inflation low and employment as high as possible. Fed officials have cut the central bank’s key interest rate at its last three meetings in an effort to encourage spending and boost hiring.
“We believe it will be increasingly clear that the ‘maximum employment’ side of the Fed’s mandate is in jeopardy,” economists at Wells Fargo Securities led by Sarah House wrote in a commentary.
What This Means For The Economy
The job report is likely to show a “frozen” job market that has avoided mass layoffs, but has few opportunities for workers, which risks slowing down the economy as a whole.
Tuesday’s report is highly anticipated partly because it was delayed by the government shutdown in October and November. It will combine data that the BLS normally would have released in early November and then early December, had the government not been shut down. It will also omit October’s unemployment rate and other household-survey data, which were never collected because of the shutdown.
The most recent jobs reports showed that growth slowed down significantly this summer, and is now running far below the 147,000 jobs added per month in the 12 months through April.
The new data will provide an updated snapshot of how President Donald Trump’s economic policies and other circumstances are affecting the job market. Many businesses have curtailed hiring because of uncertainty surrounding Trump’s campaign to impose steep import taxes on nearly every country in the world. His crackdown on immigration has also had a significant effect on the labor market, to the point that it has caused shortages in certain industries. On top of that, some companies say they have laid off workers as they adopt artificial intelligence.
“Given the huge policy shift from lax to strict immigration enforcement, the push by the Trump Administration to thin government payrolls, as well as the ongoing aging of the population and layoffs attributed to AI, payroll growth should be slow,” Brian Wesbury, chief economist at First Trust Advisors, wrote in a commentary.
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A report in line with expectations would be a mixed bag for workers, since it won’t reflect widespread layoffs, but it will also signal there are few opportunities for hiring or advancement.
“What data we do currently have is muddy but concerning. We know, for example, that job creation slowed dramatically this past summer,” Michael Linden, senior policy fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a progressive think tank, wrote in a commentary. “Obviously, affordability and prices are top of mind right now for most Americans, but we very much do not want to add ‘unemployment’ and ‘job loss’ to that list of concerns.”