Job Growth Has Been Very Lopsided Over the Past Year

Despite swinging wildly between monthly job gains and job losses over the past 12 months, the U.S. labor market added 251,000 jobs since April 2025. That growth hasn’t come evenly distributed across industries, however, with gains heavily concentrated in a single sector: health care and social assistance. Accounting for more than 650,000 new jobs, the health care sector continues to offset widespread losses elsewhere, so much so that, without it, the overall economy would have shed roughly 400,000 jobs and we would be having a different conversation.

As our chart shows, nine sectors, accounting for more than half of all jobs in the U.S. saw the number of payrolls decline over the past year. That includes manufacturing, finance and information as well as the government sector, which saw the biggest decline, shedding 250,000 jobs. These figures suggest that the labor market may not be as solid as the headline figures suggest. With high energy prices and AI-related automation looming, some sectors may instead continue to cut jobs rather than create new positions.