One number gets reported each month, and it hides a fight. Some sectors are hiring hard while others shed jobs, and the two independent counts of the same thing often disagree. This page puts all of it on one chart so you can see who is actually hiring.
That is Jul 2026. Over the last three months the average has been 20,000 a month, which is the figure most people actually watch. Companies added 30,000 and government cut 53,000. Unemployment is 4.1%.
Hover any point to see the exact figures. You can show up to 5 lines at once, and picking a sixth drops whichever you chose first.
Split every job in the country into six groups. The bars below show how many jobs each group added or lost in the latest month. A minus number means that group shed jobs while the total may still have risen.
The six parts add up to -23,000 jobs, which is exactly the headline figure. They have to: every job in the country sits in one of the six and in no other.
These add up exactly, and they have to. Every job sits in one of the six groups and in no other, so the six changes must sum to the change in the total. Nothing here is estimated or weighted.
The ten parts of the private economy plus the three levels of government, at the same moment, over three different lengths of time. Sorted by the last twelve months, so the sectors doing the work sit at the top and the ones shedding jobs sit at the bottom.
| SECTOR | JOBS NOW | THIS MONTH | 3-MONTH AVG | OVER 12 MONTHS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Health and education | 28.0m | +25,000 | +34,333 | +550,000 |
| Professional and business services | 22.5m | +18,000 | +19,333 | +115,000 |
| Leisure and hospitality | 16.9m | -40,000 | -13,667 | +83,000 |
| Construction | 8.3m | +22,000 | +9,667 | +82,000 |
| Other services | 6.0m | +9,000 | +3,000 | +49,000 |
| Mining and logging | 0.6m | -2,000 | -333 | -3,000 |
| Manufacturing | 12.6m | +5,000 | +4,667 | -14,000 |
| Local government | 15.1m | -57,000 | -21,667 | -30,000 |
| State government | 5.5m | +7,000 | +667 | -33,000 |
| Shops, transport and utilities | 28.7m | -4,000 | -2,333 | -36,000 |
| Information | 2.8m | +11,000 | -2,333 | -81,000 |
| Finance and property | 9.1m | -14,000 | -12,000 | -114,000 |
| Federal government | 2.7m | -3,000 | +667 | -252,000 |
The ten private sectors add up to private jobs exactly, and the three government rows add up to government jobs exactly. Those two totals then add up to the headline. Nothing is left over.
Two organisations count private jobs every month, and they line up sector for sector. One surveys businesses. The other counts payslips at the firms it processes wages for. Where they disagree is worth more than either number on its own, because it tells you the answer depends on who you ask.
| JUL 2026 | 12 MONTHS TO JUL 2026 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SECTOR | OFFICIAL | ADP | OFFICIAL | ADP |
| Mining and logging | -2,000 | -6,000 | -3,000 | -49,000 |
| Construction | +22,000 | +1,000 | +82,000 | +59,000 |
| Manufacturing | +5,000 | +2,000 | -14,000 | -63,000 |
| Shops, transport and utilities | -4,000 | -8,000 | -36,000 | -31,000 |
| Information | +11,000 | +5,000 | -81,000 | +27,000 |
| Finance and property | -14,000 | +10,000 | -114,000 | +51,000 |
| Professional and business services | +18,000 | +9,000 | +115,000 | +67,000 |
| Health and education | +25,000 | +36,000 | +550,000 | +610,000 |
| Leisure and hospitality | -40,000 | -11,000 | +83,000 | +27,000 |
| Other services | +9,000 | +6,000 | +49,000 | +74,000 |
ADP covers private jobs only. It never sees a government payroll, so there is no public sector row to compare. Both columns are read at the same month, which is the newest month both surveys have published. ADP comes out two days earlier, so for a couple of days each month it is already a month ahead and this table waits for the official count to catch up rather than comparing two different months.
Nobody counts every job in the country every month. Each of these measures a different slice, a different way, on a different schedule. Knowing which slice you are looking at is most of the skill.
A survey of about 119,000 businesses and government offices, covering roughly a third of all the jobs in the country. It counts filled positions, not people, so somebody with two jobs is counted twice.
What it countsEvery job outside farming, private households and the armed forces. That is what "nonfarm" means, and it is the only reason the word is in the name.
Good forThis is the headline. When you hear "the economy added 150,000 jobs", this is it.
A private payroll company counts the jobs at the firms whose wages it actually processes, then scales that up. It is a real count of real payslips, not a survey, but only of its own client base.
What it countsPrivate jobs only. It never sees a government payroll, so it cannot tell you anything about the public sector.
Good forIt lands two days early, so it is the first read of the month. It also disagrees with the official number often and by a lot, so treat it as a second opinion rather than a preview.
A count of people filing for unemployment pay for the first time. Not a survey and not an estimate: it is an administrative record of forms that were actually filed.
What it countsOnly people who qualify for state unemployment pay and bother to claim it. The self-employed and most gig workers do not appear at all.
Good forThe fastest signal there is on the jobs market. Weekly, and only five days behind. If layoffs are starting, this moves first. The chart is monthly, so it plots the average of a month’s weeks and waits until every week of that month has printed.
The same records, counting people who filed earlier and are still drawing pay week after week.
What it countsThe stock rather than the flow. New claims tell you how many people just lost a job; this tells you how many are still without one.
Good forThe two together separate "people are being let go" from "people cannot find anything new". Since 2024 the second has been the more worrying half.
A separate monthly survey of about 21,000 workplaces asking how many roles were unfilled on the last working day, how many people started, and how many left.
What it countsDemand for workers rather than the number employed. Hires and leavers are both far bigger than the monthly jobs figure, because that figure is the difference between them.
Good forOpenings and quits both turn down well before layoffs turn up, which makes them the early warning. It arrives about a month later than everything else here.
A survey of about 60,000 households, asking people directly whether they have work. This is where the unemployment rate comes from, and it is a completely different survey from the one that produces the jobs number.
What it countsPeople, not positions. Somebody with two jobs counts once. It also counts the self-employed and farm workers, who are missing from the headline count.
Good forIt is why the jobs number and the unemployment rate can point opposite ways in the same month. They are not the same survey and they are not measuring the same thing.
The two big surveys disagree constantly, and neither one is wrong. One counts jobs, the other counts people. One misses the self-employed, the other includes them. One is far larger and so far steadier month to month. When a headline says "jobs up, unemployment up too", that is usually the two surveys talking past each other rather than a contradiction.
Every one of these numbers gets revised. The jobs report is revised twice in the two months after it first appears, and then again once a year against near-complete tax records. Those annual revisions have run to several hundred thousand jobs. This page follows the corrections rather than freezing the first version, so a figure here can move after you first read it.
The sector bands on this page add up exactly, which is unusual. They are counts of people, so the parts simply sum to the whole. Nothing is estimated, nothing is weighted, and there is no rounding gap to explain away.
Short answers, no jargon. You do not need any of this to read the chart, but it is here when a name on the list makes no sense.
It is a count of filled jobs, taken from company payroll records, leaving out farms, private households and the armed forces. Those exclusions are old and practical rather than meaningful. The important word is jobs, not people: if you hold two jobs, you are in there twice.
They come from two completely different surveys. One asks businesses how many positions they filled. The other asks households whether the people living there have work. They cover different things, they are different sizes, and they are collected separately. A month where jobs rise and unemployment rises too is not a contradiction. It is two surveys.
Because they answer to a different force. Company hiring follows demand and interest rates. Government hiring follows budgets, elections and policy. Mixing them hides both. Local government alone is bigger than federal and state put together, and most of it is schools.
They are measuring different populations with different methods. ADP counts real payslips, but only at the firms it works for. The official figure is a survey of a much wider sample, and it gets revised as more of the sample reports in. ADP arriving first does not make it a preview of the official number, and treating it as one is the most common mistake made with it.
The jobs number is hires minus leavers, so a quiet month can mean nobody moved or it can mean a lot of hiring cancelled out a lot of leaving. Openings, hires and quits pull those apart. A jobs market where nothing is happening looks very different from one that is churning, and the headline cannot tell them apart.
People resign when they believe they can do better somewhere else. So the share of people quitting rises when workers feel secure and falls when they do not. It fell steadily from 2022 onwards, which is one of the clearest signs that the jobs market cooled even while the headline count stayed positive.
New claims count people who just lost a job. Still claiming counts people who lost one a while ago and have not found another. Both matter, and they can move in opposite directions. Flat new claims with rising continuing claims is the pattern of a market that is not firing people but is not hiring them either.
The first figure is published before all the responses are in. It is revised twice over the next two months as more arrive, and then once a year against near-complete tax records. That annual correction has run to several hundred thousand jobs. A first print is a good estimate, not a final answer.
A single month carries a lot of noise, and the margin of error on the headline is around plus or minus 130,000 jobs. That is bigger than a typical monthly change. This is why the three-month average is the number most people actually watch, and why the buttons above the chart offer it.
Shops hire for Christmas and let people go in January. Schools empty in July. Every figure on this page has that repeating yearly pattern taken out, so a January fall shows up only if it was bigger than January usually is. Without it, every December would look like a boom.
Because they are counts of people. Every job in the country sits in exactly one of the six groups, so the changes have to sum to the change in the total. That is not true of the inflation page, where the parts are index numbers carrying rounded weights and never quite close.
Enough to keep up with population growth, and that number is not fixed. It depends on how fast the working-age population is growing and how many of them want a job, both of which move. It has been estimated anywhere from below 50,000 to above 150,000 in recent years, which is why this page does not draw a line for it.
| MONTH | ALL JOBS | PRIVATE | GOVERNMENT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2026 | -23,000 | +30,000 | -53,000 |
| Jun 2026 | +20,000 | +30,000 | -10,000 |
| May 2026 | +63,000 | +61,000 | +2,000 |
| Apr 2026 | +148,000 | +150,000 | -2,000 |
| Mar 2026 | +214,000 | +202,000 | +12,000 |
| Feb 2026 | -156,000 | -148,000 | -8,000 |
| Jan 2026 | +160,000 | +180,000 | -20,000 |
| Dec 2025 | -17,000 | -7,000 | -10,000 |
| Nov 2025 | +41,000 | +72,000 | -31,000 |
| Oct 2025 | -140,000 | +13,000 | -153,000 |
| Sep 2025 | +76,000 | +68,000 | +8,000 |
| Aug 2025 | -70,000 | -20,000 | -50,000 |
| Jul 2025 | +64,000 | +65,000 | -1,000 |
| Jun 2025 | -20,000 | -45,000 | +25,000 |
| May 2025 | +13,000 | +20,000 | -7,000 |
| Apr 2025 | +108,000 | +99,000 | +9,000 |
| Mar 2025 | +67,000 | +67,000 | 0 |
| Feb 2025 | +42,000 | +40,000 | +2,000 |
| Jan 2025 | -48,000 | -76,000 | +28,000 |
| Dec 2024 | +237,000 | +212,000 | +25,000 |
| Nov 2024 | +134,000 | +116,000 | +18,000 |
| Oct 2024 | +33,000 | -4,000 | +37,000 |
| Sep 2024 | +155,000 | +142,000 | +13,000 |
| Aug 2024 | +9,000 | -27,000 | +36,000 |
This page shows the last ten years. The full history back to 1990, every sector, all four windows and the machine-readable feed come through the Helious API, and through MCP at api.helious.io/mcp if you want your own tools to read it directly.
Per-series pages with the next release date and the full print history: payrolls, the unemployment rate, jobless claims, continuing claims, ADP, job openings. What it means for prices: the inflation tracker. What it means for rates: the Treasury curve and the FOMC.
