In October, the U.S. labor market again showed strength, with 165,000 new nonfarm jobs counted, compared with the 60,000 hiring from the revised September data. At the same time, the unemployment rate fell by one tenth, to 4.1%, according to records from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The volume of new payrolls recorded in October reflects a clear acceleration compared with the average monthly increase of 48,000 nonfarm jobs observed during the previous 12 months.
In addition, the figures for the previous two months have been revised upward. In August, 53,000 more jobs were added, to a total of 186,000, while in September 29,000 new positions were added, raising job creation for that month to 60,000 payrolls.
Most of the employment gains in October were concentrated in professional and business services, health care, as well as in the transportation and warehousing sectors.
Employment in professional and business services grew by 70,000 jobs in October, well above the average of 15,000 recorded in the previous 12 months. For its part, the health care sector added 42,000 workers, compared with a mean of 31,000 over the past year.
Transportation and warehousing also contributed to the dynamism of the labor market, with 25,000 additional jobs in the tenth month of the year, driven above all by the sharp increase in messenger services (+17,000) and air transportation (+4,000).
Meanwhile, in October, the average hourly wage for all private nonfarm employees increased by 14 cents, 0.4%, to reach 38 dollars, which implies a year-on-year increase of 3.1% in the average hourly wage.
Regarding unemployment, the unemployment rate eased by one tenth, to 4.1%, and has remained since March in a range between 4.3% and its current level.
The total number of unemployed people stood at 7.06 million, compared with 7.1 million in September, of whom 2 million were long-term unemployed, that is, without work for 27 weeks or more, with practically no change from the previous month, which represents 27.6% of the total unemployed.
People working part-time for economic reasons, who would have preferred full-time employment but worked fewer hours because they had been cut back or had failed to secure a full-time contract, increased by 339,000, to 4.8 million in October.
The good performance of the U.S. labor market in October was already hinted at after it was learned that initial unemployment benefit claims totaled 189,000 in the last week of October, about 6,000 fewer than in the previous week and the lowest level since mid-July, matching records that had not been seen since 1969.
For its part, the consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas has indicated that the number of layoffs announced by U.S. companies in the month of October reached a total of 43,994, 2% more than in September, but a 71% decrease compared with the 153,074 layoffs announced in October 2025.
Thus, the volume of layoffs reported by companies in the U.S. in the tenth month of the year is the lowest for an October since 2023, when 36,836 workforce cuts were notified, and it remains below the average of 56,348 layoffs recorded in October between 2015 and 2025.
Up to October, employers have announced 617,189 layoffs, 44% fewer than the 1,099,500 reported in the first 10 months of 2025 and the lowest accumulated figure through October since 2022, when 243,338 departures were notified.