February Lost 92,000 Jobs, Labor Force Participation Rate Changes Little
The one plus? Federal employment continues to decline, losing 10,000 jobs in February.
Oof.
The February 2026 jobs report came in with a bang and….not much is even decent.
The economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. Experts expected an estimated 55,000 growth.
The economy also saw part-time workers dropping by 249,000 and full-time workers declining by 100,000.
The unemployment rate rose from 4.3% to 4.4%, too.
Employment in health care decreased in February, reflecting strike activity. Employment in information and federal government continued to trend down. Payroll employment changed little on net in 2025. Health care employment declined by 28,000 in February, following a large increase in January (+77,000). Offices of physicians lost 37,000 jobs in February, primarily due to strike activity. Hospitals added 12,000 jobs. Over the prior 12 months, health care had added an average of 36,000 jobs per month. Employment in information continued to trend down in February (-11,000). The industry had lost an average of 5,000 jobs per month over the prior 12 months. In February, federal government employment continued to decline (-10,000). Since reaching a peak in October 2024, federal government employment is down by 330,000, or 11.0 percent. Employment in social assistance continued its upward trend in February (+9,000), driven by individual and family services (+12,000). Transportation and warehousing employment changed little in February (-11,000). A job loss in couriers and messengers (-17,000) was partially offset by a gain in air transportation (+5,000). Employment in transportation and warehousing has declined by 157,000, or 2.4 percent, since reaching a peak in February 2025.
Unfortunately, mining, quarrying, oil and gas extraction, construction, and manufacturing changed little.
Those numbers might disappoint President Donald Trump, who has been pushing for greater independence in those sectors since he took office in January 2025.
The labor force participation rate (62%) and employment-population ratio (59.3%) changed little.
The administration also received a blow in revisions: “The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for December was revised down by 65,000, from +48,000 to -17,000, and the change for January was revised down by 4,000, from +130,000 to +126,000. With these revisions, employment in December and January combined is 69,000 lower than previously reported.”
However, hourly earnings for all employees on nonfarm payrolls increased by 15 cents (0.4%) to $37.32.
But Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, believes “a lackluster labor market threatens consumer spending, which is the main driver of the entire economy.”
“Especially after adjusting for inflation, income growth is under pressure, and therefore people’s ability to spend is constrained,” explained Daco.
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Comments
AI effect IMO
AI is merely a pretext.
how many “jobs lost” were jobs held by “temp workers” who had crossed the border without papers?
“The economy also saw part-time workers dropping by 249,000 and full-time workers declining by 100,000.”
Media has been under telling the story. IT & Tech still suck.
Disney among others is laying off hard. Their woes are because of their disastrous woke entertainment and their profitable park biz is subsidizing losing streaming, marvel, etc.
Those tossed out in tech 6 mos to a year ago are still fighting to find work.
Even the non-nose picking useless ones. I know a few who have just gone to other industries.
On the plus side they could sign up and serve their country eh? Or learn to code? 😂
AI can code now….those poor journalists can’t catch a break.
The employment picture is not great. Three big reasons:
1. Poor methodology and constant downward revisions
2. Shrinking Federal employment as a policy of Trump Admin, same for govt contractors, loss of funding to support NGO ‘jobs’, end of Covid era ‘extra funds’ to State and local gov’t
3. AI in the beginning stage of disruption with more to follow means less hiring and more layoffs of semi skilled and JR knowledge economy workers with functions that can be replaced by AI
There’s six million workers who want full time but can only find part time work. Another six million not in labor force but want to be. There’s a skills mismatch. Some new college grad with degree in Computer Science is basically toast, coding and basic functions that used to require an entry level worker with some skill will be done by AI. People gonna have to get the skills to do the jobs that are needed not necessarily the job they want. The ‘dream job’ days are basically done. When’s the last time you saw a ‘day in the life of a tech company female’? on TikTok? They got/will get fired b/c they didn’t add value, same for most DEI positions and other non core fluff roles.
Wow, I wonder what happened in February. I seem to remember some snow and Ice shutting stuff down a few times in the North East as well as several feet of snow and torrential rain out west. Maybe I’m wrong
I imagine that might do some havoc to attendance records, I don’t see how it would affect employment records .
Sure weather had an impact but that doesn’t fully explain or account for the bad numbers nor the downward revision of about 1.5 million jobs to the ”25 numbers.
The Biden admin papered over bad private sector numbers with lots of govt hiring and statistical sleight of hand. Those have mostly ended and/or being unwound. Trump inherited a lemon economy with lots of structural issues created by horrible policies and he’s working harder and smarter to make lemonade out of it but lemonade is bitter not sweet.
the usps is bk our country and could easily be shut down and the work farmed out to private companies who would need workers some of them former usps
lot of tech companies let though because of tech