Jobs evaporated unexpectedly, a troubling sign for US economy.

A job fair in Sunrise, Fla., June 26, 2025. Employers cut 92,000 jobs in February 2026, the Labor Department reported on March 6, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent; losses cut across nearly all major sectors, including health care, which was weighed down by a nurses strike in California. (Scott McIntyre/The New York Times)

By SYDNEY EMBER

Hiring fizzled in February, a sign of unexpected weakness in the labor market that sent warning signs flashing through the broader economy.

Employers slashed 92,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported late last week, with losses cutting across nearly all major sectors. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%.

The report dimmed the picture of the labor market, injecting a surprising note of caution into an economy already reeling from chaos in energy markets brought on by the war in Iran and fresh unknowns over trade policy. And it all but foreclosed the prospect of a swift resurgence in job growth after an anemic year of hiring that was weighed down by economic uncertainty.

“This is a rough report,” said Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “You might even say this is a bad report.”

Many economists had forecast that employers would shake off their reluctance to hire this year, encouraged by surprisingly robust job growth in January. The latest figures signaled that renewed vigor in the economy could take longer to materialize than anticipated.

Revisions to previous months bolstered the case that the job cuts in February were consistent with a broader decline rather than a blip. In December, employers shed 17,000 jobs, down from an earlier estimate of a gain of 48,000, and hiring figures for January were also revised downward slightly, to 126,000. Taken together, job growth for the last three months effectively slowed to zero.

Employment in February fell in industries across the board, including in manufacturing, which lost 12,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality shed 27,000 jobs. Construction cut 11,000 jobs.

The most destabilizing losses occurred in health care and social assistance, whose growth had for months helped offset sluggishness elsewhere. Weighed down by a nurses strike in California and Hawaii involving 31,000 workers, the sector lost 19,000 jobs last month, depriving the labor market of its most reliable ballast.

“It’s a pretty fragile labor market if we’re depending on one industry to add all the jobs,” said Kory Kantenga, head of economics for the Americas at LinkedIn.

The report is unlikely to shake the Federal Reserve’s view before its next meeting on March 17-18 that it can afford to take its time before cutting rates again. Yet it is certain to stoke divisions between officials there who appear highly concerned about the labor market’s health and others who seem more focused on the risk posed by inflation, especially given the unrest in the Middle East.

Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, settled Friday at over $92 a barrel, up almost 30% over the past week. It was the biggest rise in the oil price since April 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic. The S&P 500 dropped 1.3% on Friday.

The Trump administration blamed weak job numbers on severe winter storms and other factors and insisted that the president’s economic agenda was working.

“I think it’s consistent with everything else we’re seeing, which is the economy is really strong,” Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said in an appearance on CNBC.

The February data did not show a more-than-typical weather effect.

Democrats pounced on the report, saying it was a sign that the economy could tip into a recession. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York called it a “blaring alarm” and said that “the economy may go over the cliff.”

Economists cautioned not to read too much into one month’s data and urged a wider view of the labor market that balanced the February job losses against the robust gains in January. Added together, the labor market gained 34,000 jobs in the first two months of the year.

“You’re seeing a labor market that’s still kind of holding serve,” said Stephen Juneau, an economist at Bank of America.

“I think people got excited a little bit by January,” he added, “and this is just saying that, you know, the economy is maybe not turning all that quickly in either direction.”

There were other reassuring data points in the report Friday. Wage growth remained solid, at 3.8% over the year, suggesting that hiring was not constrained solely by the supply of available workers even as the Trump administration’s immigration policy has decreased the number of job seekers.

The share of people in their prime years who were working or looking for work fell slightly in February, to 83.9%, but was still hovering around post pandemic highs.

Although the unemployment rate rose, it did so marginally, implying that the economy does not need to add as many jobs to keep up with growth in the labor force. For some groups, including young people, the unemployment rate dropped.

Initial claims for unemployment insurance have also stayed low, indicating that employers overall are not laying off workers in large numbers despite some headline-grabbing jobs cuts at major companies.

Bob Funk Jr., the CEO of Express Employment International, a staffing agency in Oklahoma City, said clients were “feeling a little more assured about the economy” and “cautiously optimistic about where things are going.”

To the extent he has seen pullback in hiring, he said it had largely involved call centers, software companies and other employers that are more susceptible to artificial intelligence. He attributed any other reduction in hiring to a shortage in qualified workers and not to falling demand.

“If they are slowing down their hiring, it’s simply because they can’t find the qualified talent,” he said.

Many analysts still expect the labor market to gain traction this year. Intense uncertainty around the Trump administration’s trade policy and the war in Iran will probably ebb. Larger-than-normal tax refunds are likely to propel consumer spending, juicing the demand for labor at more companies.

“It’s a foggy road ahead — where are we going?” Juneau said. “We think we’re still going to see the labor market improve over the course of this year.”