:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-2242711529-11543f52022f4158a04fa439ae9f04a0.jpg "What To Expect From Wednesday’s Report On The Job Market")
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Key Takeaways
- The economy likely added 55,000 jobs in January, up from 50,000 in December, a report is expected to show Wednesday.
- The unemployment rate is expected to remain at 4.4%, a relatively low level by historical standards.
- Tariffs, the immigration crackdown, and AI have thrown sand in the gears of the U.S. employment machine in recent months.
You could get a job anywhere you wanted in January, as long as you wanted to work in health care.
That’s the upshot of what forecasters expect a report Wednesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show. U.S. employers likely added 55,000 jobs that month, up from 50,000 in December, according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
As in recent months, job gains are expected to be concentrated in health care, with careers in other fields becoming harder to find as employers remain in a no-hiring mindset. The unemployment rate is forecast to remain at 4.4%, a relatively low level by historical standards.
The data will shed light on the job market as the economy’s trajectory remains uncertain. Officials at the Federal Reserve are increasingly concerned about a possible surge in unemployment. Among the recent red flags about the job market: employers had fewer openings in December than at any time since 2020. Economists look at job openings as a leading indicator of future job growth.
What This Means For The Economy
Wednesday’s report will be closely watched for signs that the job market is taking a turn for the worse, and that a recent hiring slowdown is turning into serious job losses.
The report is also expected to provide a grim look backward at the job market, incorporating data from a quarterly survey that was not available when the bureau made its initial monthly reports. A preliminary version of the revision, released in September, showed the economy added nearly a million fewer jobs between March 2024 and March 2025 than initially thought. It was originally supposed to be published on Friday, but was delayed by a brief government shutdown last week.
“The final revision reported with the January data is likely to be somewhat smaller but may still wipe out most of the job growth reported for 2025,” Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research think tank, wrote in a commentary.
The job market has been dragged down by several government policies and, at least somewhat, by technological changes.
Trump’s far-reaching tariffs and their on-again, off-again implementation have stoked uncertainty among business leaders and curtailed hiring and expansion plans. The immigration crackdown is diminishing the available labor force, suppressing hiring while also keeping the unemployment rate from spiking. And some companies say they are shrinking their workforces as they expand the use of AI software.
