U.S. Nonfarm Employment Drops in October 2025

Revelio Lab’s non-government dependent jobs data for October 2025 reports the seasonally-adjusted total nonfarm employment level in the U.S. is 159,238,994. This figure represents a 9,057 net loss in jobs from September 2025.

The firm’s detailed employment by sector data indicates the biggest contributor to the net loss in jobs was reduction in the number of government employees compared to the previous month. Overall, for the sixteen sectors tracked by Revelio Labs, nine were negative and seven were positive, with most showing relatively small changes in October 2025. Here are the five sectors that saw the biggest month-over-month changes:

• Government: 23,279,400 (-22,200)
• Retail Trade: 15,410,900 (-8,500)
• Manufacturing: 12,784,400 (-5,200)
• Manufacturing: 9,397,800 (+9,600)
• Education and Health Services: 26,929,800 (+22,000)

We’ve updated our pair of charts tracking Revelio Lab’s seasonally-adjusted nonfarm employment data from January 2022 through October 2025, which we’ve compared against available data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which hasn’t reported any jobs data past August 2025 because of the continuing federal government shutdown.

The chart also reveals how Revelio Lab’s data was revised over this period with its latest report. We observe the firm’s estimates increased by a small amount over the entire period covered by our chart.

We’ve also indicated the BLS’ total nonfarm employment estimates for the period, which are quite different in the period from January 2022 up to January 2025. The BLS’ employment estimates have deteriorated in quality in recent years because the size of its sampling of U.S. employers plunged during the 2020′s coronavirus pandemic and has not recovered, giving the BLS a much less complete picture of the nation’s employment situation than it had before.

With enough Democratic party senators voting to break their party’s filibuster against a Republican bill that would fund the U.S. government’s operations, an end to the shutdown now appears to be on track. However, we think it will likely be another month before the BLS’ employment estimates for the months they missed reporting might become available. After they do become available, we’ll do one last recap of the total nonfarm employment data before resuming our series on teen employment trends.

References

Revelio Labs. Total Nonfarm Employment National. [CSV Data]. 2 November 2025.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Total Nonfarm Employment. Current Employment Statistics – CES. [Online database]. Last Updated 5 September 2025.

Image credit: Woman Filling Out a Job Application by amtec_photos on Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons CC by-SA 2.0 Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Deed.