Private education and health accounted for over 100 percent of job gains in 2025.
Change in Select White Collar Jobs
- Professional and Business Services: Negative 9 of 12 months in 2025
- Information: Negative 7 of 12 months in 2025
- Financial: Positive 10 of 12 months in 2025
Select White Collar Jobs Sum of Monthly Changes
For the year, professional and business services lost 97,000 jobs. Information lost 30,000 jobs. Financial gained 38,000 jobs.
AI is impacting these job categories.
Change in Manufacturing and Construction Jobs
Change in Manufacturing and Construction Jobs
- Manufacturing: Negative or Zero 10 of 12 Months
- Construction: Negative or Zero 7 of 12 Months
Construction did have two good months. This was likely data center construction. Residential and office has been dismal all year.
Change in Manufacturing and Construction Jobs 2025
- Manufacturing: -68,000
- Construction: +14,000
Construction may have been negative without data center and utilities.
Change in Education and Health, Leisure and Hospitality
2025 Jobs Synopsis
- Nonfarm payrolls gained 584,000 jobs in 2025.
- Leisure and Hospitality provided 188,000 of them.
- Private education and Health provided 709,000 of them
Together, PE&H + L&H provided 897,000 jobs of the 584,000 total jobs. Government subtracted 149,000 (a good thing).
ADP Employment by Firm Size
Synopsis
- Small businesses are suffering
- White collar jobs other than Education and Health are suffering
- Manufacturing is suffering
- Retail is suffering (Up a mere 2,000 in 2025)
- Residential construction is suffering
- The only signs of strength are in Education and Health, and Leisure and Hospitality, marginally (188,000 is weak except in recessions)
- Negative revisions are coming
What Do We Call This?
Trump says it’s the greatest economy ever, silly.
You should known that by now.
Expect Negative Revisions
On September 9, 2025 I commented New QCEW Data Indicates More Big Negative Revisions Coming to Job Reports
The discrepancy between jobs reports and quarterly data widens again.
It’s based on highly accurate QCEW data that I expect negative benchmark revisions next month.
January 9, 2026: Nonfarm Payrolls Rise by 50,000 with 76,000 in Negative Revisions
2025 closed out with a thud. Here are the details.
Assuming there are no more negative revisions (and what is the likelihood of that), the year-over-year employment gain was just 610,000.
I expect the next benchmark revision to wipe that out. Thud!
What happened to the story about millions of people dropping off ACA? Did it happen? Looking at the new health jobs, it’s doubtful.
I’m betting blogs will soon be replaced by AI, tailored to meet the confirmation bias of readers with increasingly outrageous articles.
Perhaps Mish has already left the building?
More likely, comments on blogs are entirely AI and you are only one batch of electrons summoned to deny reality and promote the interests of the owner of the AI complex that emitted you
He’s probably just handing out in the orgasmatron,stepping out once in a while to throw out a keyword like gestapo.
First off, glad this didn’t get too political because AI is not political (some politicians will try to put the genie back in the bottle, but that’s not going to work). Historically, new tech has had net job gains over time … but AI could be the exception here. It is obviously capable in many white-collar applications … and robotics is hot on its heals to attack blue collar. Smart folks are moving towards Trades … but these are by no means completely safe. I look simply at the move in plumbing from copper to pex. This lowered the skill threshold needed for small to mid-size jobs. I see more technology helping like this in HVAC, electrical, etc.. Even working oil rigs (something we’re all supposed to hate now) is becoming more automated where now 1 person can do what 4 did before. So I’m not all gloom and doom … but I understand folks that are. It may be that AI will continue to mint new billionaires (like the 3 22 year olds who started a small company and are now all billionaires) … but it may cause millions of unemployed folks .. and that’s just in the US.
On the other side, I see remote folks in 3rd and 4th world countries having better medical access than ever dreamed of. I see some visually impaired folks being able to virtually see (who knew Star Trek TNG was going to become real this soon), I see traffic fatalities dropping (hopefully my AI can react faster than I did when that freaking deer popped out of nowhere) … it will be interesting.
On the AI coding side, I think that is not as good as many folks are saying. Doing everything with AI is going to lead extremely hard to manage code and code that no person understands architecturally or down to the code level.
I don’t think it can build a working architecture of any significant complexity that actually runs, so hopefully that will serve to limit the messes that get made.
The only use I find for AI is to replace search. Google search has been utter crap the past 10 years and their own AI manages to give me enough info or point in right direction (w/ links) with out going through page after page of SEO crap (often generated by AI).
Kind of like worker bees when the season is over.
Healthcare is next for some head rolling, replaced by AI agents.
Radiologist MD’s are fighting tooth and nail to remain competitive against AI scan engines but it is only a matter of [short] time until this begins to occur en masse.
MD’s are using AI to listen to patients during office visits and transcribe what is said by the patient into the EMR software, like EPIC.
AI isn’t make mush impact on Radiologist. The systems are to error prone. AI is mostly hype, and sell it for a living.
Medical errors (by humans) is the third leading cause of death. I’ll take my chances with AI. Better yet I’ll take my chances with 3 different AIs than one or 3 humans.
https://baltimoretimes-online.com/news/2024/05/10/johns-hopkins-study-points-to-medical-errors-as-americas-third-leading-cause-of-death/
“You should known that by now.”
Should be have known or know
If people can’t write, AI will fix it. If your IQ is 90, AI will raise it to 120. Easy peasy.
If it can drop your BMI, that’d be even better.
I wrote about my relative using ChatGPT over a lawyer in a real case scenario but everyone I know is using ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude to find answers for everything now.
Data entry jobs which then lead to supervisor roles then manager roles are all toast now. You don’t need the whole chain with AI able to do all of that.
Google released “antigravity” which can build whole web apps and platforms in minutes. The whole computer engineering job industry is toast!
Just watch this video and be amazed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exVJM48nylw
Yes, all the websites that depended on luring people to their site to register a site visit and view a few ads are dying now as the AI summaries give most people what they need immediately.
But it isn’t just the websites that depend on this old business model that are hurting. There are all the people behind the scenes who designed websites to optimize SEO so they got closer to the top of the hit list and therefore attracted visitors and the aggregators that sell ads and of course, there are the websites that actually sell products/services that people click on in ads.
The damages that AI brings to the old business model ripples through the industry.
Sounds like one of the issues you always raise is solved. A robot looking like a supermodel, unlike the one in Lost in Space, will be wiping the Boomer’s @sses in the nursing homes. Danger! Warning!
Thanks, MPO.
The Only Growth In The Economy Right Now Is The Building
Of The ‘Digital AI’ Prison – Total Surveillance – Digital ID.!
Know anyone losing their @ss on Natural Gas?
How can we quantify how much AI is affecting these job categories? Can we even quantify it?
You can’t, and I can tell you AI isn’t making much impact yet.
My totally unscientific and data-free guess is that it’s probably currently mainly affecting call center workers – both within the US and abroad. Office rent in Manila might plummet.
What’s with the negative vibes ???
As of today, the GDPNOW is clocked in at a 5.1% growth rate for the 4th quarter.
as 9 jan 2026 – 1 year deficit is $2.3 trln. it is only federal!
to remind you : during 2007*8 recession when USA FIN SYSTEM WAS REALLY ON edge of total collapse it took less than $500*800 bil to calm down / fix market!
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now , it is each 3 months !!
alx
The negative vibes are due to jobs and inflation.
Sentiment is very sour for good reason.
But OK the stock market is doing great and so is GDP, assuming no negative revisions to the latter.
But spending money that benefits the top 15% does not make the bottom 85% feel great.
And just talk to anyone on the street and they can tell you 99% of the time (assuming they’re not 300 years old) that they generally think the following:
• times are rough right now
• something big is probably going to happen
• they don’t see it getting better soon
The specifics may vary but I’ve found at least locally, in an area supposedly doing very well compared to the rest of the nation, the mood is sour.
I won’t be surprised if some black swan event in 2026 tanks the market by 20-30% in a single day.
Doesn’t even take an unexpected event. There are things that are expected (but date and details unknown) that could crash the market and by much more than 30%.
China launching a mass invasion of Taiwan would be such an event.
The only unknowns is how bloody, US military involvement, destruction of the chip factories, Nvidea collapsing etc.
What it takes is an ‘event’ with very low probability, that has a major bad impact.
Why? Because hedging eliminates/reduces the risk of loss, otherwise.
Admittedly, the event can even be in plain sight, but it is ignored, since the risk is low, or unacknowledged.
After Black Monday in October 1987 circuit breakers setup only allow for 20 percent drop before the markets are closed for the day. Although the decline can continue the next market day.
Um, except when assets trade across markets. Eg. Comex can close, but Shanghai continues to trade. How long can a price differential continue without arbitrage (or delivery–in the case of gold and silver)
Very helpful. Now, what black swans, and when, do you have in mind, because that’s the real issue?
People generally report their opinion based on their favorite media opinionator. This is also known as brain washing. It also explains why AI is so important to social development.
Agreed. Look how the bottom 85% are reacting in Iran!
When you compare GDPNow with GDP (both real, quarterly % annual rate, SA), there are as many false negatives as false positives. Not sure how reliable a snapshot it is. (GDPNow-Real Gross Domestic Product | FRED | St. Louis Fed )