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    WTO clings to signs Trump still needs it — sometimes

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    The shutdown meant no jobs report. Here’s what it would have said about the economy

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    The first Friday of the month brings the closely watched Bureau of Labor Statistics nonfarm payrolls survey. That didn’t happen because of the government shutdown.
    While the BLS has gone dark, other reports outside the government data suggest the labor market just plodded along in September.
    Broader trends suggest an uneven labor market, with professions like health care continuing to thrive while other fields lag.

    Recruiters speak to job seekers at the Appalachian State University internship and job fair in Boone, North Carolina, US, on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025.
    Allison Joyce | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    If it just seems like the first Friday of the month wasn’t the same without being able to pore through the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ hotly watched monthly jobs report, don’t worry. You probably didn’t miss much.
    While the BLS has gone dark with the shutdown in Washington, other reports outside the government data suggest the labor market just plodded along in September.

    The Dow Jones consensus forecast was for growth of 51,000 in nonfarm payrolls with the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.3%.
    High-frequency data that includes job postings, private payrolls and state-by-state figures for initial jobless claims indicate that while employment growth continues to be anemic, the labor market overall isn’t capsizing, at least not anytime soon.
    “We fight with the army we have at moments like this, where it’s critically important that we’re figuring out whether the economy is in a moment of transition,” Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee said in a CNBC interview Friday. “This is what we have, and thus far it still continues to point to a pretty stable labor market.”
    The Chicago Fed is one of those organizations looking to provide alternates to BLS data that had come under harsh White House criticism prior to this week’s shutdown.
    Though the timing was coincidental, the central bank district in September unveiled its own dashboard of data measuring key labor market metrics including unemployment, the hiring rate and the layoff rate.

    Bottom line: The unemployment rate held flat at 4.3%, though another hundredth of a point or two would have pushed it to 4.4% — the highest since October 2021 but still low by historical standards.
    Other nongovernmental data showed similar trends: Conditions overall are softening, with job availability gradually shrinking.
    But employers are still reluctant to part with workers given the lessons from the Covid pandemic, when a rash of layoffs in the early stages was followed by the monumental task of refilling those jobs. At one point, open positions outnumbered available workers by more than 2 to 1.
    “A lot of the new entrants in the market, young workers, recent graduates, people who are already unemployed [are] having a hard time getting into the market,” said Cory Stahle, senior economist at job postings site Indeed, which itself provides an encompassing menu of labor market data. “Regardless of what the unemployment rate is, people taking longer to find jobs is a sign of some economic distress for some households.”

    Signs of imbalances

    Indeed’s measure of job postings shows a decline of about 8.9% from a year ago as of Sept. 26, a sharper drop than the 5.5% reflected in BLS data, which only runs through August.
    Broader trends suggest an uneven labor market, with professions like health care continuing to thrive while other fields lag, Stahle said.
    “Overall, things are looking pretty good, but a lot of those job gains, a lot of those postings and hiring, are coming from health care, and so it’s hard to say that the labor market is fully in balance when it’s not providing equal opportunities across different occupations,” he said.
    BLS data also has shown a fairly sizeable tilt in openings toward health care-related professions, with business and professional services next followed by leisure and hospitality. Government had been a leader but has pulled back since President Donald Trump began his term in January with a vow to pare down the federal payroll.
    “Right now is a good time to be a nurse, not so good of a time to be working as a software developer,” Stahle added. “That bifurcation of the labor market is also an important thing to look at here, not just the overall balance and an overall number.”
    Other indicators paint a similar picture, though ADP’s private payroll count for September showed a decline of 32,000 jobs and an August loss of 3,000 as well. ADP on occasion also has been maligned for being incongruent with BLS data. However, the firm’s reports are getting a closer look after it signaled a slowdown in the labor market well before the BLS marked down its own counts also to show a weak hiring picture.
    It wasn’t just the monthly nonfarm payroll account that went missing because of the shutdown: The Labor Department also didn’t release its weekly tally of initial jobless claims.
    Goldman Sachs came to the rescue for that metric, figuring that state-level claims data that was filed pointed to a national total of 224,000 — slightly higher than the previous week but largely in line with trends through most of the year.

    Other measures

    Beyond simple job or payroll count, spending data also can be a useful indirect gauge.
    Bank of America’s credit and debit card tracking showed spending on a steady uptick in September. Total card outlays compared to a year ago increased 2.2% for the week ending Sept. 27.
    “Spending growth remains solid despite soft labor data. We will continue to monitor this dichotomy,” BofA economist Shruti Mishra said in a client note.
    Similarly, Fiserv’s small business index showed annual sales and transactions increased 2.3% in September, reflecting the same pace for the past three months.
    However, other small business indicators show weakness.
    “Right now we see that there are a lot of firms that have job openings. There are, unfortunately, very few that get filled,” Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business, told CNBC on Friday. “So plans to fill them are always very optimistic, but when the dust clears, very few jobs actually get created.” More

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    Trump’s attacks cast a chill on what Wall Street says

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    in Economy

    For first-time job hunters, a college degree isn’t unlocking the opportunities it once did

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    Data shows young college grads are feeling the brunt of the labor market slowdown.
    One think tank has dubbed the U.S. “no country for young grads.”
    Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged a few weeks ago that young people are having a “harder time” locking down work due to a “low-firing, low-hiring environment.”

    Students wait in line before the start a career fair at the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering in the Brooklyn borough of New York.
    Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    With a Georgetown degree and several internships under her belt, Christina Salvadore thought she’d be starting a career in New York City’s fashion or beauty industries around now. The problem: She can’t find a job.
    The 23-year-old hasn’t been able to land a full-time role despite filling out hundreds of applications and taking dozens of networking calls since graduating in the spring. She’s currently applying to part-time gigs to tide her over financially.

    “It definitely sucks when people are like, ‘So what are you doing now?,'” Salvadore, a Florida native, told CNBC. “I’m sitting in my parents’ house on LinkedIn 24 hours a day.”
    A growing body of data shows Salvadore isn’t alone. Young college grads are having a uniquely difficult time trying to clinch their first full-time jobs and feeling the brunt of the weakening labor market.
    On a macro level, this group’s tough luck is moving the needle in broader data sets that are used in part by economists and monetary policymakers to determine the health of the economy. For the hundreds of thousands of Americans in this camp, it’s altering their visions for what they thought this era of life would look like.

    The unemployment rate for “new entrants,” a group that includes new college grads and others trying to break into the full-time workforce, hit a nine-year peak this year, federal data shows. The group’s share of the total unemployed population spiked to its highest percentage in decades.
    Put simply: The U.S. has become “no country for young grads,” according to Gad Levanon, chief economist at Burning Glass Institute, and his team at the labor-focused think tank.

    An ‘unusual’ trend

    In a report published this summer, Levanon and his team found that the bachelor’s degree isn’t delivering on its “fundamental promise” of access to white-collar jobs for the first time in modern history. The once-lauded path from college campus to career, the team concluded, is increasingly less reliable.
    After Levanon fielded questions about whether the trend was impacting all young workers or just those with college diplomas, he conducted further analysis of federal data. It shows 20- to 24-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees have seen the most extreme levels of unemployment compared with historical levels than other educational groups.

    To be sure, bachelor’s degree holders in this age bracket have long benefited from a lower unemployment rate compared with those with just high school diplomas. But Levanon’s data shows the gap between the two groups is the smallest it has been since at least the early 2000s.
    “You clearly see here something unusual for the bachelor’s degree,” Levanon told CNBC.

    On popular social media platform TikTok, young adults fresh out of college have made the trials and tribulations associated with finding their first post-grad job a sort of subgenre. They’re documenting the journey and lamenting the discouragement they feel. They’re moving home with their parents. They’re questioning why entry-level job postings require several years of experience. They’re wondering if companies have to “ghost” them, meaning they never get a response to an application.
    Several have used the slang phrase “crashing out” to describe how they’re faring emotionally.
    “I feel like I’m behind right now,” said recent Boston College grad Michael Hartman, who recently sought insight from a psychic about his career trajectory after around 10 months of unsuccessful job hunting. Hartman has an economics degree and has been seeking a consulting or business strategy role.

    ‘Very stressful’

    This turn of fortune for America’s newest college grads has caught the attention of top economic policymakers and comes amid mounting concerns about the labor market at large.
    Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged a few weeks ago that young people are having a “harder time” locking down work. He pointed to a “low-firing, low-hiring environment,” a landscape that economists have said makes it particularly tough for those looking to break into the full-time workforce.
    The number of workers getting hired and quitting slowed in August, according to government data released Tuesday. Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released in September show the volume of people staying unemployed for at least 27 weeks has ballooned around 25% year over year on a seasonally adjusted basis. (Federal labor data previously expected to be released this week is on hold for the duration of the government shutdown.)

    Burning Glass’ Levanon said the problem stems in part from the rising share of young Americans obtaining four-year degrees. The demand for workers with this education level isn’t keeping up, he said, meaning current conditions may not improve anytime soon.
    This could result in a hit to college enrollment as young people realize higher education is not the career pipeline it once was, Levanon added.

    A graduating student of the City College of New York wears a message on his cap during the College’s commencement ceremony in the Harlem section of Manhattan.
    Mike Segar | Reuters

    On top of that, artificial intelligence’s rise has raised alarm that entry-level, knowledge-worker roles will be automated away.
    In August, Stanford published a bombshell study finding U.S. workers aged 22 to 25 in jobs most exposed to AI have seen a 13% decline in employment since 2022. Anecdotally, executives at companies ranging from Walmart to Accenture have said the technology will drastically reshape their labor forces.
    Tightening in the labor market has made an entire generation more worried about what the future will hold. Reported probability of losing a job over the next five years among 18- to 34-year-olds in May jumped to highs last seen in 2013, according to University of Michigan data.

    These concerns have changed the outlook for recent and soon-to-be college grads alike. After seeing friends struggle to secure employment, Emma Zatkulak began firing off applications several weeks earlier than she previously anticipated. The 21-year-old finds herself scheduling interviews for sales and insurance roles in between a full class load and two jobs.
    “It’s been very stressful,” said Zatkulak, who is in her final semester as a communications major at Boise State University in Idaho. “I have not felt calm in a couple months.”

    A ‘real phenomenon’

    However, not all new grads may be feeling this shift to the same extent.
    On job board Indeed, software development job listings are at around 66% of the volume seen before the Covid pandemic. On the other hand, nursing position postings are up about 16% compared with the same baseline.
    “It’s a real phenomenon,” said Laura Ullrich, Indeed’s director of economic research for North America. “But at the same time, I do not think it applies to all students or all young people. It depends on what sector they’re working in.”

    Still, Ullrich acknowledged that there’s reason for young adults’ anxiety. She pointed to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics that found fewer tracked industries have added jobs over the last six months than removed them, which has historically only happened during and around recessions.
    In the technology industry, the decline in entry-level hiring is particularly clear. The percentage of hires with little work experience has plunged more than 50% at large-cap tech companies between 2019 and 2024, according to venture capital firm SignalFire. At startups, that rate has dropped more than 47%.

    Young job seekers told CNBC that the difficulty of finding a job has brought up feelings of social isolation and self-doubt. As rejections pile up, they said it can become hard not to take it personally.
    Over recent months, Julia Vasedkova has watched fellow graduates from Tennessee’s Rhodes College start their new lives as young professionals. Meanwhile, Vasedkova has been in a state of self-described “limbo” with only a part-time job, despite sending off hundreds of applications. The English major has applied for teaching, publishing and social media positions.
    The 24-year-old finds herself turning down invitations for social gatherings to conserve money for rent and other expenses. It’s also time that she could be spending trying to find the increasingly elusive post-grad job, anyway.
    “It’s definitely exhausting. Some days, it feels like I have a full-time job just to apply for jobs,” Vasedkova said. “It just feels like I don’t really have a life outside of that.”

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