State of the Workforce October 2026 - Hiring Came Back, Your Raise Did Not

Reading time: about 22 minutes. Jump to What Should You Do With a Month Like This for what the data means for your next move.

October is the month hiring came back. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employers added 165,000 jobs, well above the average monthly gain of 48,000 over the prior 12 months, and it raised its estimates for August and September at the same time. Job openings were 7.5 million in September, quits rose to 3.4 million, and announced layoffs were the lowest for any October since 2023. On almost every count that measures whether employers want workers, the answer this month was yes. That is real progress after a summer in which the jobs number kept getting smaller each time it was revised.

The catch sits in the pay line. Average hourly earnings for private workers rose 3.1% over the year, and the consumer price index for September showed prices up 3.7% over the year to September. Hiring recovered, but the raise that comes with a job did not keep up with the receipt at the checkout. This is the October edition of Metaintro's monthly State of the Workforce report. Last month we called it the raise that lost to prices. This month the jobs story got better and the pay story got worse, and we follow both through the employers, filings and data behind them.

October at a Glance

• 165,000 jobs added in October, with August and September revised up by a combined 84,000 and the three-month average at 137,000.
• 4.1% unemployment rate, inside the 4.1% to 4.3% range it has held since March.
• 3.1% vs 3.7%, the yearly rise in average hourly pay against the yearly rise in consumer prices to September.
• 43,994 announced job cuts in October, the lowest October total since 2023.
• 189,000 initial jobless claims in the week ending October 31, matching the lowest weekly level since 1969.

The Help Wanted Sign Is Back, the Raise Is Not

By Lacey Kaelani, CEO of Metaintro.

For most of this year, the honest answer to whether you should look for a new job has been to do it carefully. Hiring was slow, revisions kept taking jobs away from months we thought were fine, and employers were holding on to the people they had without adding many more. October changed the tone. Employers added jobs at more than three times their average monthly pace over the past year, the summer months were revised up instead of down, and layoffs stayed near the floor. If you have been waiting for a sign that the door is open again, this is the closest thing to one we have seen in months.

But I want to be careful about what kind of door it is. The sectors that added the most jobs this month were professional services, health care and delivery. In all three, average hourly pay has risen more slowly than prices over the past year. Health and education workers saw their average hourly pay rise about two percent in a year when prices rose closer to four. So a lot of the hiring that came back is hiring into jobs where the paycheck is falling behind the cost of living, even when the job itself is secure.

There is a second thing hiding under the headline. The number of people working part time because they could not get full-time hours jumped by hundreds of thousands in a single month, almost all of it because their employer cut their hours. That is not a layoff. It does not show up in the job cut count or the unemployment rate. It shows up as a smaller paycheck from the same employer, which is exactly the kind of loss people blame on themselves instead of on the market.

More jobs is good news. More jobs that pay less than prices rise is a slower pay cut with a hiring sign in front of it.

So my advice this month has two parts. First, if you have been waiting to move, move. Openings are at their highest since May, people are quitting again, and layoffs are near the floor. Second, do not judge an offer by whether it exists. Judge it by whether it beats prices. Our analysis of BLS data shows professional services employers made about 71 hires for every 100 openings in September, down from about 79 a year earlier, so the sector posted more openings but hired fewer people than a year ago. When openings go unfilled, a candidate who shows up ready has room to negotiate, so use it on the number, not just on the start date. A job you can get is not the same thing as a raise you can keep.

What Did October's Jobs Report Actually Show?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday, November 6, that total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 165,000 in October and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.1%. The gain was higher than the average monthly gain of 48,000 over the prior 12 months, and employment increased in professional and business services, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing. Private employers accounted for 159,000 of the total, and the three-month average for total nonfarm payrolls rose to 137,000 from 79,000 a month earlier. After a summer of uneven numbers, with July negative and September at 60,000, that is a clear step up.

The October gain also clears an important bar. BLS says an over-the-month change of about 122,000 is statistically significant in the establishment survey, so October's 165,000 gain is statistically significant by the agency's own measure. The breadth of the gain points the same way. The diffusion index for 250 private industries rose to 57.6 in October from 54.2 in September, which means clearly more industries added jobs than cut them. Manufacturing's own diffusion index rose to 62.5 from 51.4.

The household survey showed a market that held its ground. The number of unemployed people was 7.1 million, and the unemployment rate has stayed in a narrow range of 4.1% to 4.3% since March. The labor force participation rate was 61.9% and the employment-population ratio was 59.3%, and BLS notes both have shown little net change since January. The number of long-term unemployed, those jobless for 27 weeks or more, was 2.0 million, or 27.6% of all unemployed people. That last figure is the reminder that a better month for hiring does not reach everyone at the same speed.

The one line in the household survey that moved sharply was part-time work. The number of people employed part time for economic reasons increased by 339,000 to 4.8 million in October. These are people who wanted full-time work but had their hours reduced or could not find a full-time job. Almost all of the increase came from the slack work or business conditions group, which rose by 356,000 to 3.3 million, while the number who could only find part-time work barely moved. In plain terms, employers did not just add jobs this month. Some of them also cut hours for people they already employ.

What Do the Revisions Do to Last Month's Story?

Every month we re-check last month's comparisons against the new release, because revisions quietly change them. This month they changed in the good direction. Last month we reported that payrolls rose by just 29,000 in September. September is now 60,000, and August was revised up by 53,000, from 133,000 to 186,000. With these revisions, employment in August and September combined is 84,000 higher than previously reported.

That matters for how to read the whole autumn. A month ago, the summer looked like a labor market that had stalled, and our September report was built around a 29,000 gain. On the revised numbers, August, now 186,000, clears the 122,000 bar for a statistically significant gain by a wider margin, and October clears it too. The pattern is no longer a slow fade. It is a slow summer followed by a firmer autumn, and our September headline was less than half of the revised figure. Revisions run in both directions, which is why we treat any first print as provisional until it has been revised at least once.

Is Your Raise Keeping Up With Prices?

In October, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 14 cents, or 0.4%, to $38.00. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.1%. For production and nonsupervisory employees, the group that makes up about 82% of private payroll employees, pay rose 12 cents, or 0.4%, to $32.75. A 0.4% monthly rise is a solid month for pay on its own. The problem is the comparison it has to win.

The Consumer Price Index for September showed prices up 0.6% in a single month and 3.7% over the year, a larger increase than the 3.4% reported for the 12 months ending in August. BLS said the index for gasoline rose 9.1% in September, accounting for over half of the monthly increase, and the energy index was up 20.4% over 12 months. Food rose 2.5% over the year, and prices excluding food and energy rose 2.6%. So the gap between pay and prices is driven mostly by energy, but it is a gap every household pays at the pump and on the utility bill.

Put the two side by side and the gap has widened. Last month we compared 3.0% pay growth with 3.4% inflation. This month the comparison is 3.1% against 3.7%. Pay picked up a little, prices picked up more. That is the core of this month's headline. Hiring came back, and the raise did not keep pace with what it has to buy.

Which Sectors Are Winning and Losing the Raise Race?

The economy-wide average hides a wide spread, and Metaintro's analysis of BLS Table B-3 shows the spread runs against the sectors doing most of the hiring. In private education and health services, average hourly pay rose from $35.95 to $36.67 over the year, an increase of 2.0%. In transportation and warehousing, pay rose 2.5%, and in professional and business services it rose 3.0%. Those are the three areas that led October's job gains, and all three trail the 3.7% rise in consumer prices.

The sectors where pay beat prices were mostly ones that hired little this month. Construction pay rose 4.7% over the year and information pay rose 4.6%, while BLS described both industries as showing little change in employment in October. Leisure and hospitality pay rose 3.9% and mining and logging pay 4.2%. Manufacturing is the exception that does both, with pay up 3.8% and employment up 19,000 in October. For a job seeker, that split is the most useful finding in this month's data. The easiest jobs to get right now are not, on average, the ones with the raises that beat inflation.

Where Did the Jobs Actually Go?

Professional and business services led October with 70,000 jobs, well above its average monthly gain of 15,000 over the prior 12 months. The gains were spread across professional, scientific and technical services (+33,000), administrative and support and waste management services (+28,000), and management of companies (+9,000). BLS notes the sector has added 269,000 jobs since a recent low in October 2025. Temporary help services, which sit inside administrative and support, added 18,600 jobs in October, so a part of the headline gain is temporary staffing rather than permanent roles.

Health care added 42,000 jobs, higher than its average monthly gain of 31,000 over the prior 12 months. Hospitals added 16,000, home health care services added 11,000 and outpatient care centers added 5,000. This continues a pattern we have tracked all year. In Metaintro's analysis of BLS data, health care and social assistance added about 519,000 jobs in the 12 months through October, out of about 885,000 for the whole economy, and its monthly change beat the total nonfarm change in 13 of the last 24 months. Health care is no longer one strong sector among many. It is carrying a large share of US job growth.

Transportation and warehousing added 25,000 jobs, led by couriers and messengers (+17,000) and air transportation (+4,000). The sector has added 104,000 jobs since a recent low in February, with couriers and messengers contributing 71,000 of that gain. With the holiday season starting, delivery networks are adding people now, which fits Amazon's record seasonal hiring announcement covered below. Manufacturing added 19,000 and has increased by 101,000 since a recent low in December 2025, with gains in computer and electronic products (+7,000), machinery (+4,000) and primary metals (+4,000). In manufacturing, the average workweek held at 40.5 hours and overtime edged up to 3.1 hours.

The rest of the economy mostly stood still. BLS said employment showed little change in mining, construction, wholesale trade, retail trade, information, financial activities, social assistance, leisure and hospitality, other services and government. Leisure and hospitality was down 13,000 and information was down 1,000 in the summary table, and government added 6,000. So October was a month of concentrated strength. Four sectors did most of the work, and the rest neither added nor cut much. That concentration is worth remembering when you read the headline as a sign that every kind of employer is hiring again.

Why Do the Other Surveys Disagree?

The ADP National Employment Report, released on November 4, counted 86,000 new private jobs in October, against 159,000 private jobs in the government count. ADP described "solid growth for a second month," and revised its September figure from 90,000 to 86,000. The two surveys agree on direction, which is the most important thing. They disagree on private payroll size by about 73,000 jobs, and on one sector they disagree completely.

That sector is professional and business services. ADP says it "lost jobs for the third straight month," with a decline of 27,000 in October. BLS says the same sector added 70,000. We do not pick a winner here, because the two surveys measure different things in different ways. ADP's count is based on anonymized weekly payroll data covering more than 26 million private-sector employees, while BLS surveys a large sample of employers and revises its estimates as more reports come in. We suspect part of the gap is temporary staffing, where BLS counted 18,600 new jobs in October. The safest reading is that professional services hiring is uneven, strong in some firms and weak in others, and that next month's revisions will tell us which survey caught it better.

ADP's pay data adds a useful layer to our headline. Median base pay for workers who stayed in their jobs rose 3.0% over the year, while pay for job-changers rose 4.8%. On gross pay, which includes bonuses and overtime, stayers saw 4.4% and changers 7.6%. "Employers of all sizes were hiring last month, and our data suggests that job-changers were lured by a combination of bonuses, overtime, and more hours in addition to higher base pay," said Dr. Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, adding that "earnings growth for these workers hit its fastest pace since March 2024." On base pay, only job-changers beat September's 3.7% inflation rate. On gross pay, which includes bonuses and overtime, both groups did.

The JOLTS report for September, released on November 3, showed job openings little changed at 7.5 million, hires at 5.4 million and quits rising to 3.4 million, with the quits rate at 2.1%. On BLS data, openings of 7,523,000 were the highest since May, and quits rose by 321,000 in one month, the largest monthly increase since May 2023. Layoffs and discharges changed little at 1.6 million, a rate of 1.0%, and fell by 70,000 in health care and social assistance. Over the year, total quits increased by 375,000. Quits are the best measure of whether workers feel confident enough to leave, and in September more of them did.

Where the quits came from matters. BLS said quits increased in accommodation and food services by 197,000, and hires in the same industry rose by 158,000. Leisure and hospitality is a low-wage, high-turnover part of the economy, but it is also one of five major industry groups where average hourly pay rose faster than prices over the past year. Higher quits there fit the wider ADP finding that job-changers are getting larger raises than people who stay. Weekly unemployment claims add one more confirming signal. The Department of Labor reported 189,000 initial claims in the week ending October 31, down 6,000 from the prior week, with the four-week average at 194,750. On FRED data, that ties the week ending July 18, 2026 as the lowest reading since September 1969.

Who Cut Jobs in October, and Why?

Challenger, Gray and Christmas reported on November 5 that US-based employers announced 43,994 job cuts in October, up 2% from the 43,281 announced in September and down 71% from the 153,074 announced in October 2025. October's total was the lowest for the month since 2023, when 36,836 cuts were announced, and below the 56,348 average for October from 2015 to 2025. It was also the eighth month this year in which cuts came in below the same month a year earlier.

The year-to-date picture is just as quiet. Through October, employers have announced 617,189 job cuts, down 44% from the 1,099,500 announced in the first 10 months of 2025, and the lowest year-to-date total through October since 2022. "This is a low-fire environment. Employers are holding on to the workers they have heading into the holidays, and the hiring they are announcing is largely short-term, seasonal work," said Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray and Christmas. That line sums up the month better than any single number.

By industry, food companies led October with 9,677 cuts, the sector's highest monthly total this year, and food has announced 39,370 cuts in 2026, up 43% from the same point last year. Technology announced 5,576 cuts in October, its lowest monthly total of the year, but it still leads all industries with 171,501 cuts through October, up 21% on last year and already above the 154,445 it announced in all of 2025. Technology accounts for 28% of all cuts this year. Transportation has announced 44,838 cuts this year, up 188%, its highest January-to-October total since 2020. FinTech firms announced 4,173 cuts in October, bringing their year-to-date total to 11,979, up 543%.

Two other details from the report are worth noting. California led all states with 10,032 cuts in October, and the West accounted for 46% of the month's total. And Microsoft announced voluntary exit offers to 60,000 employees in October, which Challenger did not include in the October count because it records voluntary programs by the number of people who accept or by a stated reduction target. That means one of the largest workforce moves of the month is not yet in the layoff numbers at all. How many people accept will show up later.

Why Did AI Fall Down the List of Reasons?

The biggest change in this month's report is in the reason column. Market and economic conditions led all reasons in October for the second consecutive month, cited for 16,407 cuts, or 37% of the total. With 130,531 cuts so far this year, market and economic conditions has now overtaken artificial intelligence as the leading reason for job cuts in 2026. Closings accounted for 10,250 cuts in October and restructuring for 5,499.

AI was cited for 1,265 cuts in October, its lowest monthly total this year. It has still been cited for 121,401 cuts so far in 2026, approximately 20% of all cuts, and in 193,226 since Challenger began tracking it as a distinct reason in 2023. Andy Challenger said that "AI dominated layoff announcements through the spring and summer, but this fall companies are pointing to demand and economic conditions." For workers, the shift is less comforting than it sounds. A cut blamed on the economy is just as final as one blamed on software. What it does suggest is that the wave of AI-labeled restructuring announced earlier this year has, for now, slowed.

What Do the Hiring Plans Say?

The hiring side of the Challenger report is dominated by one announcement. Employers announced 470,400 seasonal hiring plans through October, up 26% from 372,520 at the same point in 2025, which had been the lowest total since Challenger began tracking seasonal hiring in 2012. Amazon's 300,000 seasonal hires are the largest single seasonal hiring announcement Challenger has tracked, and account for nearly all of the 300,252 technology hiring plans announced in October.

The concentration is the story. Only five companies have announced seasonal hiring so far this year, compared with 11 at this point last year, and seasonal positions make up 72% of all hiring plans announced in 2026. Retailers announced 13,300 hiring plans in October. In September, employers announced 90,787 hiring plans, the lowest September total since 2011. So the hiring that employers are announcing out loud is mostly temporary, mostly at a handful of very large companies, and mostly tied to the holidays.

What Is Actually Hiring?

The data tells you which sectors are growing. It does not tell you who is hiring, what they pay or how to apply. So for each sector that added jobs in October, we went to the employers' own careers pages and newsrooms. The pay figures below come from individual postings and announcements, so treat them as examples of what one employer is offering in one place, not as company-wide pay scales. Each one is a real role or program that was live on the employer's own site when we checked it.

Delivery and warehousing. Amazon said on October 20 that it is "hiring over 300,000 people for seasonal, part-time, and full-time roles across its U.S. core operations nationwide this holiday season." The company says seasonal employees earn an average of $20 an hour, and full-time operations employees start at a minimum of $20 an hour, with average hourly pay reaching nearly $24. Starting January 1, 2027, eligible seasonal employees will have access to health care coverage from their first day on the job, and Amazon says new openings will be posted weekly from October through December, with job alerts at amazon.com/localjobs. At FedEx, a seasonal part-time package handler posting in Clinton, Pennsylvania lists pay of $19.65 to $22.15 an hour, and the company's November 5 holiday announcement says it continues to hire for operational positions in certain locations. These are the kinds of roles in the part of the economy where couriers and messengers added 17,000 jobs in October.

Hospitals and home health. At MultiCare Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup, Washington, a registered nurse role in the birth center working 12-hour night shifts lists a pay scale of $48.15 to $90.83 an hour, with potentially up to a $10k sign-on bonus for qualifying external candidates and up to a $10k relocation bonus. In home health, Amedisys is hiring a weekend registered nurse admissions role in San Antonio, Texas, with a listed salary of $80,000 to $88,000 during an orientation of up to nine weeks, after which pay switches to a per-visit rate. Hospitals added 16,000 jobs and home health care services 11,000 in October, and these postings show the kind of roles behind those numbers.

Professional, technical and support services. At Booz Allen Hamilton, a Power Platform developer role in Washington, DC posted on November 5 lists a projected compensation range of $69,400 to $158,000 a year. At the other end of the sector, Allied Universal is hiring seasonal event security staff in Nashville at $17 an hour starting pay, with flexible evening and weekend shifts. Both are in the sector that added 70,000 jobs in October, which shows how wide that sector's pay range is. The developer role and the security role count the same in the headline. They do not pay the same.

Factories and metals. Caterpillar is hiring supplemental second-shift production assemblers in Decatur, Illinois, starting at $20.40 an hour plus a $1.00 an hour shift premium. Micron Technology posted a scanner engineer role at the NYCreates site in Albany, New York, with a US-wide base salary range of $111,000 to $189,000 a year. And U.S. Steel broke ground in October on a $1.9 billion direct reduced iron plant at its Big River Steel Works in Osceola, Arkansas, which it says will create approximately 200 full-time jobs and an estimated 2,000 construction jobs at peak. Those roles sit in the manufacturing industries where BLS counted October gains, machinery, computer and electronic products and primary metals.

Airlines. In air transportation, which added 4,000 jobs in October, Delta Air Lines said in a September 2 announcement that it is accepting flight attendant applications for its upcoming 2027 hiring classes, for both English-speaking and bilingual candidates. Delta's announcement does not list pay, so ask about the starting rate and training pay early in the process.

The pattern across these postings is the same one the data shows. Entry-level roles in delivery, security and assembly start between $17 and $20.40 an hour, while skilled roles in nursing, engineering and technology pay roughly two to four times that at the middle of their posted ranges. The hiring that came back in October spans both ends. Where you land on that range matters more for whether your raise beats prices than which sector you join.

What Should You Do With a Month Like This?

If you have been waiting to move, this is a better month to start. Openings are at their highest since May, quits are up and layoffs are near their lows, which is the combination that tends to make employers compete for candidates. ADP's data shows job-changers getting 4.8% base pay increases against 3.0% for people who stay, and 7.6% against 4.4% once bonuses and overtime are included. If your pay has trailed prices since spring, the market is now giving you a reason to test what you are worth elsewhere.

Check the sector, not just the offer. All three sectors adding the most jobs saw average pay grow more slowly than prices over the past year. That does not mean you should avoid them. Health care, professional services and logistics are where the openings are, and many of those roles are stable. It means the raise has to be negotiated, because the sector average will not hand it to you. Bring the number. Average hourly pay in your field, what you earned a year ago and the 3.7% inflation figure for September are three facts you can put on the table in any offer conversation.

Watch your hours as closely as your job. The jump of 339,000 in people working part time for economic reasons, almost all of it from employers cutting hours, is the quiet risk in this report. If your hours have been trimmed, you are part of that number. Track your weekly hours and your take-home pay for the next two months. If both are falling while your hourly rate is flat, that is the moment to start a search, before the next round of cuts arrives in the form of a schedule change instead of a layoff notice.

Take seasonal work seriously, but read it carefully. Seasonal roles are the biggest single source of announced hiring right now, and Amazon says seasonal employees have the opportunity to transition into full-time roles. Ask at the interview what share of seasonal hires were kept on last year, and what the hourly rate becomes after the season. A seasonal job that is a bridge to a permanent role is a good move. One that ends in January with no path forward is only a short-term paycheck. Both are worth knowing before you say yes.

If you are in tech, read this year's numbers together. Technology still leads all industries in announced cuts this year, even though October was its quietest month. Information employment was also essentially flat in October. The reason behind cuts has shifted from AI to the economy, but tech cuts for the year are still up 21% on 2025. If you are job hunting in tech, look at the companies hiring in adjacent fields like professional and technical services, where employment grew by 33,000 this month.

The Bigger Picture, and What This Means for You

October widened a split between the jobs data and the worker's experience that has run since spring. The headline was strong, the revisions were positive and layoffs were low. At the same time, pay lost more ground to prices, about 356,000 more people were working part time because their employer cut their hours and the hiring employers are announcing out loud is mostly seasonal. Three themes run through the month.

A recovery in hiring, not yet in pay. The labor market has moved from stalling to growing. October's gain, the upward revisions and the rise in quits all say demand for workers is firmer than it looked a month ago. But the gain has arrived first in sectors where pay has grown slowly, and the energy-driven jump in prices has outrun the raises. Until pay growth catches up, a stronger job market will feel weaker to the people working in it than the numbers suggest.

The layoff story changed its explanation. Through the spring and summer, AI dominated the layoff announcements employers made. In October that changed, with market and economic conditions now leading for the year. Cuts are low overall, the lowest year-to-date total through October since 2022. The risk has not vanished. It has moved from a technology story to a demand story, and demand stories depend on prices, interest rates and holiday spending.

Hours are the new layoff. The quiet signal of the month is the part-time line. Employers who do not want to cut jobs can cut hours instead, and that is what the household survey showed in October. It is a softer adjustment than a layoff, and it is easy to miss. For workers it means a pay cut without a notice, and for anyone watching the labor market it means the unemployment rate alone will not show where the pressure is building.

Three Things We Expect Next Quarter

• The gap between pay and prices will decide how this recovery feels. If energy prices cool, the 3.1% pay growth we have now starts to look like a real raise again. If they do not, more workers will change jobs to get ahead, and quits will keep rising.
• Holiday hiring will make November and December look strong, and January will tell us how much of it was permanent. The heavy concentration of seasonal plans in a handful of large employers means the post-holiday drop could be sharper than usual.
• The voluntary exit offers that are not yet in the layoff count, led by Microsoft's offer to 60,000 employees, will start to show up as people accept them. That could push announced cuts in technology back up even if new layoffs stay low, since Challenger says such offers tend to signal more layoffs.

What to Watch Next

The next round of data arrives within weeks of this report. These are the dates and signals that will tell us whether October's hiring holds and whether pay starts to catch up.

• Thursday, November 12, and weekly after: Weekly initial jobless claims from the Department of Labor. Watch whether the 189,000 reading holds through the start of seasonal layoffs.
• December 1: The JOLTS report for October. Watch whether quits stay near 3.4 million or fall back.
• December 2: The ADP National Employment Report for November, including whether professional services keeps losing jobs in ADP's count.
• December 3: The Challenger report for November, and possibly a first count of how many Microsoft employees accepted the voluntary exit offer.
• December 4: The Employment Situation for November, with the first revision to October's 165,000.
• December 8 to 9: The Federal Reserve's last policy meeting of the year, with a new Summary of Economic Projections.
• December 10: The Consumer Price Index for November. Watch whether energy-driven inflation cools below the pace of pay growth.
• Through December 31: Holiday hiring at the large seasonal employers. Watch whether Amazon and others say how many seasonal hires move into full-time roles.

Methodology

This report draws on the BLS Employment Situation for October 2026 (USDL-26-1632, released November 6), the BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for September 2026 (released November 3), the BLS Consumer Price Index for September 2026 (released October 14), the ADP National Employment Report for October (released November 4), the Challenger, Gray and Christmas job cuts report for October (released November 5), and Department of Labor weekly unemployment insurance claims (released November 5). Sector pay comparisons are Metaintro calculations from BLS Table B-3, comparing October 2025 with October 2026 average hourly earnings for all private employees. Hires-per-opening figures for professional and business services and the 12-month health care comparison use the BLS Public Data API.

The State of the Workforce is published monthly after each BLS jobs release. This edition was published in November 2026 and reflects the data available at that time. All figures are seasonally adjusted unless noted. October 2025 household survey data were not collected because of the federal government shutdown, so some year-over-year household comparisons are not available. The charts in this report are available to journalists as a download pack, linked below.

Download the charts (PNG, free to use with credit to Metaintro): The Month in 5 Numbers, Payroll trend, Job cuts by reason and Workforce forecast.

Sources

Government Data and Official Releases

• BLS, The Employment Situation, October 2026
• BLS, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, September 2026
• BLS, Consumer Price Index Summary, September 2026
• BLS, Table B-3, Average hourly and weekly earnings by industry
• US Department of Labor, Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims
• FRED, Initial Claims (ICSA)
• Federal Reserve, FOMC meeting calendar

Labor Market Research

• ADP National Employment Report, October 2026
• Challenger, Gray and Christmas, October Layoffs at Three-Year Low
• Challenger, Gray and Christmas, 2026 release calendar

Employer Sources

• Amazon, holiday hiring 2026
• FedEx, holiday 2026 announcement
• FedEx Careers, seasonal package handler, Clinton PA
• MultiCare, registered nurse, birth center, Puyallup WA
• Amedisys, weekend RN admissions, San Antonio TX
• Booz Allen Hamilton, Power Platform developer, Washington DC
• Allied Universal, seasonal event security, Nashville
• Caterpillar, production assembler, Decatur IL
• Micron Technology, scanner engineer, Albany NY
• U.S. Steel, Arkansas direct reduced iron plant
• Delta Air Lines, now hiring flight attendants

Recommended Reading

• State of the Workforce September 2026
• State of the Workforce August 2026
• Amazon's 300,000 holiday seasonal jobs
• Holiday seasonal hiring 2026 sends mixed signals
• Microsoft's voluntary exit offer to 60,000 employees
• Real wages fell in 2026, what it means for your raise
• Registered nurse salary 2026 by state and specialty
• FedEx CEO pushes back on the AI job loss story

Want to see who is hiring in the sectors that grew this month? Metaintro tracks 50 million verified jobs so you can search the roles behind the numbers. Sign up free and set alerts for health care, logistics and professional services roles in your area.