Introduction
Welcome to Recruiting Realities, live from Miami at the SIA Executive Forum! This episode, we’re grabbing our in-house labor market wizard, David Garrett, for a deep dive into the February 2025 US jobs report. We’ll unpack the latest job numbers, including those surprising revisions, and figure out what these shifts mean for the job market’s future – and whether we’re heading for a bumpy ride!
Yazad Dalal: Hi everyone, I’m Yazad Dalal, Chief Growth Officer here at Joveo and welcome to Recruiting Realities where we bring to you the latest developments and insights in recruitment. And today, we’re in Miami with some of the world’s largest staffing firms here at SIA Executive Forum. And, we’re speaking again with our in-house labor market economist, David Garrett, about the U.S. jobs report for February 2025. Hello, David!
David Garrett: Hey, how are you? I wish I was in Miami.
Yazad Dalal: Well, it’s a little loud over here, so you and our listeners will forgive me! But, for our listeners at Joveo, we publish Interactive Insights across all major occupations in the U.S. You can check them out on our website – joveo.com/interactive-insights
David, the most recent US jobs report for February, the US labor market added 151,000 jobs. Unemployment rate ticked up a little back up to 4.1 percent.
Sounds like good news, but we are recording this on March 11th. The stock market seems to be sending us only bad news so far this week. So I’m really curious about that. Across sectors, I think we saw gains in health care, financial activities, transportation, warehousing, government. No surprise that the federal government declined by around 10,000 jobs. But yet overall payrolls increased by 11,000, which means state and local was positive.
But again, these are lagging indicators and I think we’re very likely to see revisions which are becoming more and more common. In fact, January’s data was also revised downwards with the economy only gaining an estimated 125,000 jobs compared to the original 143,000. And in Joveo’s data, our own data, in the hot sectors like healthcare, we do see our clients continuing to get an increase in the number of qualified applicants per job. So David, I have lots of questions. Let’s get started.
First of all, what are your key takeaways from this latest report?
David Garrett: Yeah, I mean, I think the report, it shows that, it continues to show that the economy is moderating and slowing down, but it’s still resilient. Although, as you mentioned, there’s been a lot of changes since this report was capturing data. You know, one thing I think many of our listeners should know is that the majority of the federal layoffs announced in February occurred after the survey to collect job change estimates has, you know, have been sent out. So kind of like you mentioned, it’s very likely we’ll see an overall job growth decline for that sector pushing government job growth potentially into the negatives, depending on how many cuts were actually carried through. It would be really interesting to see what kind of change and revisions we see in the overall numbers next month, as you mentioned, this report is just kind of a holding point until we see future results or future numbers.
Yazad Dalal: And what kind of forward-looking risks and changes do you think we’re going to see as we go into April and the rest of this year? I mean, are we headed into a recession?
David Garrett: Yeah, I mean, it’s very possible that some or even a lot of the negative shocks to the labor market caused by these federal cuts could be absorbed by other segments of the economy. You know, could have people moving into the private sector. And I think it is a little too early to say with high levels of confidence whether the US is heading into a recession. But, you know, there will be very rippling effects throughout the broader economy. You know, it’s these cuts in federal employment. And then spending can impact private contractors. And when you take into account that consumer confidence has declined, the share of workers holding multiple jobs has increased to its highest level since, I think, the Great Recession. As you mentioned, there’s a lot of volatility in the markets because there’s a lot of uncertainty with things like tariffs. The way I’m viewing it is that any significant increases in unemployment could have more of a cascading negative effect on demand, which raises the risk of a recession.
Yazad Dalal: Well listen, thank you David. Thank you to our listeners. Thanks for putting up with all the noise in the background here at SIA Executive Forum. And to all of you at home, don’t forget to visit us at joveo.com and we’ll see you again soon.
David Garrett: Thank you. Yeah, take care.
Conclusion
This episode wrapped up with a dose of cautious optimism, noting that while the economy is clearly slowing down, it’s still hanging tough. However, keep your eyes peeled for those looming federal job cuts and market uncertainties, as they could definitely stir up some drama in the coming months!
You can check out related discussions and blogs here for more insights into the latest US labor market trends.
