Job Fair Signs where job seekers arrived at Appalachia State University Internship and Job Fair in Boone, North Carolina, USA on Wednesday, October 1, 2025.
Allison Joyce | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Separate labor market reports on Thursday showed that unemployment rates remained largely unchanged in September, but both layoffs and employment rates slowed.
Unemployment levels barely moved at 4.34%, according to a relatively new data indicator compiled by the Chicago Federal Reserve. This represents little change since August, but was only 0.01% points from moving to 4.4%, the highest level since October 2021.
In September, the Central Bank District announced it would release its own dashboard of labor market metrics, which also includes layoff rates. This was unchanged at 2.1% per month, with employment rates falling to 45.2%, down 0.4 percentage points from August.
Gray & Christmas, the challenger of outplacement company elsewhere in the labour market, reported that the layoff announcement fell 37% in September and 26% from the same month a year ago.
However, the level of planning houlaf from the beginning of the year is the highest since 2020, the year of the COVID pandemic. The Challenger said it announced that it had totaled 946,426 by the first three quarters. This figure is already 24% higher than everything in 2024.
The lowest new high ring since 2009
At the same time, the company said its employment plans had a sharp receding.
New Hirings was the total of 204,939 cases so far in 2025, the lowest level since 2009, when the US economy was still struggling with the financial crisis, starting from 58% from the same period a year ago.
“This period before many job cuts occurred during the recession, or in the first wave of automation that costs manufacturing and technology jobs, as in 2005 and 2006.”
Together, data points fill some gaps in information that usually come from the labor sector.
However, as the government closes on the second day and there are no signs of a resolution anytime soon, economists and Fed policymakers need to rely on data that does not come from the government.
The department will typically release weekly numbers of first unemployment claims on Thursday. Non-farm salaries from the Bureau of Labor Statistics will also be delayed on Friday.
