Introduction

Welcome to Recruiting Realities, your gateway to what’s happening right now in the world of hiring. Each episode explores the trends, challenges, and stories shaping how people and companies connect – and today is no exception. In this episode, Chief Growth Officer Yazad Dalal sits down with in-house labor economist David Garrett to unpack the August 2025 US jobs report, a significant historical revision, and what it signals for hiring and workforce planning.

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. Today we’re speaking about the US jobs report for August 2025 with our own in-house labor economist, David Garrett. Hey David!

David Garrett:
Howdy, how’s it going?

Yazad Dalal:

Awesome! And for our listeners, at Joveo, we publish Interactive Insights across all major occupations in the US. You can check that out at our website joveo.com/interactive-insights/ 

David on Friday, the most recent US jobs report came out for the month of August, but we are recording this on Tuesday and breaking news! The labor department released a major revision just a couple of hours ago and the revision is for all of last year and through this March 2025 and it says that the labor market created 900,000 fewer jobs during that period than previously thought. This is the largest negative revision in nearly 25 years. Not a great outlook considering that Friday’s report for August says that the US labor market added an estimated 22,000 jobs and had further downward revisions to June, which went from positive 14,000 to a negative 13,000 and only a mild gain in July, which went from 73,000 to 79,000. That’s a combined loss of 21,000 jobs over the summer. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate continues to increase ever so slightly rising from 4.2% to 4.3%
That makes it the first time it’s gone above 4.2 in almost four years.

Across sectors, there were reduced hiring gains in healthcare, which continues to, I think, to be the only maybe bellwether. It added 31,000 positions, still below its average of 42K over the past year, but that was it in terms of gains. Meanwhile in job losses, government continues to go down, I think, almost 97,000 jobs now negative since January. Manufacturing lost an estimated 12,000 jobs. It’s down 78,000 jobs since the start of the year. Wholesale trade down 32,000 jobs since May. And in Joveo’s own data, we continue to see growing demand in healthcare, in particular nurses and physical therapists. No surprise, those are both roles in the top 10 fastest growing occupations according to the Labor Department. So David Garrett, 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, thank you for breaking that news to me about the revisions. I actually hadn’t seen that this morning. But yeah, you know, it’s unfortunately the report definitely confirms that we are continuing to see the slowdown in the labor market as we’ve discussed over the last two or three months, you know, and like, I don’t want to be the harbinger, the bringer of bad news, but you know, things are looking worse off, you know, and the prospects for things getting better are getting much slimmer.

You know, the June revision alone makes it the first time we’ve had job losses since December. But again, with that change, that might be different. You know, and excluding the pandemic, the last time job losses outweighed gains was in 2010, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. So outside of that huge revision that just happened, it’s, you know, it’s been a while since we’ve had job losses outweigh gains.

We’ve still continued to see the number of available job openings in the US decline since the beginning of the year. The number of unemployed individuals surpassed number of job openings in that July report. And really more concerningly, in my opinion, is that the labor force participation rate has dropped for four months in a row, which is very likely the explanation for why that unemployment rate hasn’t really increased, but also raises concerns about how many people are being involved in the labor market.

Yazad Dalal:
Yep. I think there’s pressures that we know about from the news. You’ve got the government, deliberately reducing its workforce. You’ve got the agricultural sector and some retail and manufacturing involuntarily reducing their workforce, because of undocumented workers and raids. And you have, in the white collar sector, people coming out of college and university and finding that maybe the things that they were training for in terms of their first year analyst job in banking or in consulting are being replaced or augmented by automation and AI. So I think there’s a lot of competing forces here at work. And I take your point that it doesn’t look like great news for the American labor force. But with that, thank you, David, and thank you to our listeners. Don’t forget to visit us at joveo.com and we will see you again next time!

David Garrett:
See you soon!

Conclusion

Another great episode of Recruiting Realities! Thank you to David Garrett for once again breaking down the complex world of labor market economics for us. Today’s discussion highlights a labor market losing momentum: modest headline gains, a major downward historical revision, rising unemployment, and softening participation. For hiring leaders, the focus should be on role-level demand signals, channel efficiency, and building flexibility into workforce plans as conditions remain fluid. 

Thank you to all our listeners for joining us! Don’t forget to visit joveo.com for more of our insights and we’ll see you again soon on Recruiting Realities.