The December jobs report comes out Friday, Jan. 9 — on time for a change, after all the delays following the government shutdown. There are already some hints as to what it might look like.
Payroll processor ADP reported private-sector employers added jobs in December — 41,000 of them, which isn’t particularly great in a 159.5 million-job economy. Though at least private employers didn’t cut jobs, like the month before.
The November Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed job openings fell to a more-than-one-year low in November. Layoffs also fell, signaling a continuation of the low fire, low-hire situation.
Whatever the numbers say, here’s something that could matter as much, at least to the consumer economy: How worried folks are about holding onto their jobs and income.
All through the latter part of 2025, the job market was losing steam, said Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank.
“Job growth hit an air pocket and has really been in low gear since April of this past year,” he said.
And Adams said the working public has noticed: “People are more worried about job security, they’re less upbeat about the prospects of being able to find a new job. And that is weighing on how they’re thinking about their own personal finances.”
This is evident in the University of Michigan’s consumer surveys, said director Joanne Hsu.
“One of the big, overarching patterns of 2025 was a broad deterioration in views and expectations for labor markets — a pretty substantial increase in people expecting unemployment to get worse in the future,” she said.
People are worried about their own incomes falling, or jobs getting eliminated. Or they may know someone who’s struggling.
“Even if the consumer themselves is stable in their job, they talk about how hard the labor market is for a young person in their family, trying to look for a job right now,” Hsu said.
And even though high-income earners have been driving a lot of consumer spending, their sentiment about the job market has actually been deteriorating.
“They were the ones most likely to believe that unemployment was going to rise,” Hsu said. And she has an idea why: “The news about layoffs have been for educated workers, white-collar workers. A lot of job losses have been concentrated within the tech industry.”
Among demographic groups, the worst deterioration in the job market has been for Black workers, said Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy.
“[In November] the Black unemployment rate rose to 8.3%, up from 7.5% in September,” she said.
It’s up nearly 2% from one year ago. The overall unemployment rate is only up 0.4%.
Bottom line on the job market heading into 2026, said economist Cory Stahle at Indeed: It’s sclerotic and frozen.
“Employers holding onto their workers, not bringing new workers on board. Workers are feeling less confident in their ability to jump jobs, find new jobs. People seem to be just kind of sitting still right now,” he said.
Stahle said it’s a job market short on dynamism and opportunity for workers to earn more and advance in their careers.