The U.S. labor market lost 92,000 jobs in February, a striking loss signaling the economy’s vulnerability after a key sector — health care — wobbled.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4 percent, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Forecasters had predicted that employers added 50,000 jobs last month. But health care strikes, including 31,000 workers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Hawaii, as well as job losses across a broad swath of industries, in February resulted in the second largest decline in monthly job creation since the pandemic. December jobs gains were also revised down, showing the labor market lost 17,000 positions that month.
“This is definitely a sign that the labor market is not reaccelerating,” said Andrew Flowers, chief economist at Appcast, a recruitment advertising firm. “It is just one month of data and so I don’t want to catastrophize over one month. But I also think it’s fair to describe it as the worst month for jobs since the pandemic.”
The labor market had kicked off the year on a steady foot, adding 130,000 new positions in January, close to the same number that it added in all of 2025 — the weakest year since the pandemic.
Wage growth remained solid in February, rising 3.8 percent over the past year to $37.32 an hour.
But the share of people either working or searching for work fell to its lowest level since 2021, to 62 percent.
A variety of factors have been dampening employers’ hiring plans, including uncertainty related to trade policy, artificial intelligence and the availability of immigrant workers, among other geopolitical factors. Plus, in February, winters storms weighed on job creation.
Trump announced a new global import tax in February after the Supreme Court determined that the president had exceeded his authority by imposing trade barriers on goods from around the world, pushing businesses into renewed uncertainty about their plans.
Meanwhile, employers’ reluctance to hire was on display in the Federal Reserve’s beige book released this week, a collection of anecdotes about the state of the economy that emphasized solid staffing levels but weak hiring, in part due to muted consumer demand tied to rising prices.
Health care, which has been buoying the labor market for months, lost 28,000 positions in February, reflecting major strikes in California and New York. The information sector, which includes tech and media, shed 11,000 positions. Federal government payrolls declined by 10,000. Transportation and warehousing, construction, leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, and manufacturing also lost jobs.
“Although February is a short month and numbers often come in lower, today’s report fell significantly short of projections and indicates that employers were far more restrained in their hiring plans as the month began,” said Ger Doyle, regional president for North America at ManpowerGroup, in an analyst’s note
Separately, layoff data still remains low. The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims was unchanged last week, according to a separate report released by the Labor Department on Thursday. And layoffs fell sharply in February with U.S. employers announcing roughly 48,000 layoffs, 55 percent less than January, according to according to a report released Thursday by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
There are some signs that the hiring could accelerate this year. Consumer spending, driven by the wealthy, remains elevated. And worker productivity is strong. Companies are also expecting to benefit from lower tax rates and deregulation, which could boost hiring plans, though a rapidly widening war in the Middle East is stoking inflation fears. A surge in energy prices could mean that the Federal Reserve leaves interest rates unchanged.
Joe Brusuelas, chief economist for the accounting firm RSM, said that his firm’s internal surveys show that employers are planning to make significant investments in artificial intelligence and other technology expenditures early this year, which should result in more hiring as the year progresses.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions have reshaped the labor market over the past year, and fewer jobs are needed to keep the unemployment rate steady compared with previous years. Economists say that payroll growth of about 50,000 positions per month could be enough to keep the unemployment rate steady.
correctionA previous version of this article misreported the 92,000 job losses as job gains. The labor market lost 92,000 jobs in February.
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