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Amid a flat labor market, health services stand out as a bright spot in today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report. But the sector may not still be on the rise for long.
Due to the longest government shutdown in history, the Labor Department’s September data was delayed by six weeks, and we’re only now seeing September’s numbers. And the October Employment Situation news release has been pushed to December 16, at the same time as the November results will be released.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, in the month of September, the unemployment rate stayed roughly the same at 4.4 percent, translating to 7.6 million people. It’s a bump from one year prior, when the rate was 4.1 percent, or 6.9 million people.
Total nonfarm payroll employment climbed by 119,000 in September, but remained around the spot it has been since April. Health care accounted for an additional 43,000 jobs, the number it has been adding across the past 12 months. Ambulatory health care services gained 23,000 employees, and hospitals gained 16,000.
According to the Labor Department, from January 2025 to September, the economy added roughly 74,000 private-sector jobs per month. Around 64,000 of those jobs were in health services.
Americans generally put money into healthcare, whether or not they’re decreasing their spending in other areas. But recent government changes, like cuts to Medicaid, could threaten the continued rise in the healthcare sector.
President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” will cut $911 billion in Medicaid spending over a decade ending in 2034.
Based on data from the Congressional Budget Office, some groups, like the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, estimate that by fiscal 2034, 10 million fewer people will have health insurance due to recent legislation. It may also cause hospitals and nursing homes to hold back from increasing payroll.
There is also concern that the Labor Department’s data is off this month. Economists at Goldman Sachs pointed out that payroll processor ADP reported that private health-services and education sectors, which they report under one category, have already begun to fall.
But Goldman economists David Mericle and Jessica Rindels said in an August 17 report that the ADP numbers may be exaggerating weak points.
“While the BLS numbers are more consistent with trends in healthcare spending,” they wrote, “employment counts from large healthcare companies and views from healthcare sector analysts suggest that the truth might be somewhere in the middle.”
Wall Street's message is clear: embrace AI or be replaced by someone who will. The fine print is more nuanced, however, because as Bloomberg notes, artificial intelligence remains unwelcome in one process. The finance industry is cracking down on AI-assisted applications and interviews so it can evaluate a candidate's authentic critical-thinking skills — even as banks themselves use AI to rank applicants. According to TestGorilla, a software company that administers a library of job-specific exams, about 15% of its offerings are flagged for suspicious activity.
Recruiters say they are drowning in thousands of applicants, the vast majority of whom aren't qualified. Applicants say they spend hours tailoring resumes for roles they fit perfectly, only to get ghosted.
What gives? Are we lying to each other? I believe both sides are telling the truth, but there is more to the story.
Ghost Jobs: Many posted vacancies aren't actual openings. They exist for data collection or internal optics.
Automation: The "spray & pray" method, often powered by AI tools, allows applicants to flood portals with hundreds of applications, burying the qualified candidates in noise.
So, what is the solution?
Be Focused: Only apply to jobs where you are genuinely qualified. Don't be part of the problem.
Go Direct: If you see a job on a third-party board, find it on the company career page and apply there.
Follow Up: If a contact is listed, follow up one week after the listing closes.
I am in the same boat as many of you. I am looking for work, but I refuse to spam. I’ve applied to only about 20 roles, all directly on company sites, and only where I am a 100% match.
I haven't landed an interview yet, but I know that focusing on quality over quantity (and networking) is the only sustainable path forward. Hang in there.
Only 776 air traffic controllers and technicians who had perfect attendance during the government shutdown will receive $10,000 bonuses, while nearly 20,000 other workers will be left out, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Thursday.
Several controllers started calling out of work as the shutdown dragged on longer than a month, and they dealt with the financial pressure of working without a paycheck. Some of them got side jobs, but others simply couldn’t afford the child care or gas they needed to work. Their absences forced delays at airports across the country and led the government to order airlines to cut some of their flights at 40 busy airports.
President Donald Trump suggested the bonuses for those who have stayed on the job in a social media post, but he also suggested that controllers who missed work should have their pay docked. FAA officials haven’t publicly announced plans to penalize controllers.
Thousands of FAA technicians also had to work during the shutdown to maintain the equipment that air traffic controllers rely on. At least 6,600 technicians were expected to work throughout the shutdown, but more than 3,000 others were subject to be recalled to work.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the bonuses acknowledged the dedication of these few workers who never missed a shift during the 43-day shutdown. In a post on X, he described it as “Santa’s coming to town a little early.”
“These patriotic men and women never missed a beat and kept the flying public safe throughout the shutdown,” Duffy said in his formal announcement.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association union said only 311 of its more than 10,000 members will receive the bonuses. The union said these workers with perfect attendance deserve recognition but so do the others.
“We are concerned that thousands of air traffic controllers who consistently reported for duty during the shutdown, ensuring the safe transport of passengers and cargo across the nation, while working without pay and uncertain of when they would receive compensation, were excluded from this recognition. More than 311 of these dedicated professionals were instrumental in keeping America moving,” the union said in a statement.
The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union said the thousands of technicians it represents worked hard to keep the aging computer and radar systems controllers use operating during the shutdown, and they should all be recognized, not just the 423 getting bonuses.
“It took many hands to ensure that not one delay during the historic 43-day shutdown was attributed to equipment or system failures,” the union said in a statement.
Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen questioned why all the controllers and others who worked to keep flights moving during the shutdown wouldn’t get bonuses.
“For the Trump administration to not give a bonus to every single one of these hardworking women and men is wrong; they all deserve a bonus and back pay,” said Larsen, who is the ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
The controllers' union said they hope to work with Duffy to find a way to recognize all the other air traffic controllers who worked during the shutdown.
Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that any TSA officers who went “above and beyond” while working without pay would get $10,000 bonuses, but she never specified how many would qualify beyond the handful of checks she handed out to officers at a news conference.
The FAA was already critically short on air traffic controllers before the shutdown. Duffy had been working to boost controller hiring and streamline the years of training required in the hope of eliminating the shortage over the next several years.
Duffy has said that some students and controllers quit, and more experienced controllers retired during the shutdown. Many controllers already work 10-hour shifts six days a week because the FAA is so short on staffing.
As more controllers missed work, the FAA ordered airlines to cut flights to relieve pressure on the system. Duffy said repeatedly that FAA safety experts became worried as the absences grew because of reports from pilots concerned about controllers’ responses and several runway incursions.
Since the shutdown ended, controller staffing has improved significantly, and airlines were allowed to resume normal operations this week.
Fears about the artificial intelligence boom turning into an overblown bubble have diminished for now, thanks to a stellar earnings report from Nvidia that illustrated why its indispensable chips transformed it into the world’s most valuable company.
But that doesn’t mean the specter of an AI bubble won’t return in the months and years ahead as Big Tech gears up to spend trillions of dollars more on a technology the industry’s leaders believe will determine the winners and losers during the next wave of innovation.
For now, at least, Nvidia has eased worries that the AI craze propelling the stock market and much of the economy for the past year is on the verge of a massive collapse.
If anything, Nvidia’s quarterly report indicated that AI spending is picking up even more momentum. The highlights, released late Wednesday, included quarterly revenue of $57 billion, a 62% increase from the same time last year. That sales growth was an acceleration from the 56% increase in year-over-year revenue from the May-July quarter.
What’s more, Nvidia forecast revenue of $65 billion for the current quarter covering November-January, which would be a 65% year-over-year increase.
Given Nvidia’s forecasts, “it is very hard to see how this stock does not keep moving higher from here,” according to analysts at UBS led by Timothy Arcuri. The UBS analyst also said the “AI infrastructure tide is still rising so fast that all boats will be lifted.”
Nvidia’s numbers are viewed through a window that extends far beyond the Santa Clara, California, company’s headquarters because its products are needed by a wide range of companies — including Big Tech peers like Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta Platforms — to build data centers that are becoming known as AI factories.
“AI spending isn’t just holding up, it’s accelerating. That’s exactly what the market needed to see,” said Jake Behan, head of capital markets for investment firm Direxion.
The numbers initially lifted Nvidia’s stock price by as much as 5% in Thursday’s trading, while other tech stocks tied to the AI spending frenzy also got a boost. But Nvidia’s shares and other tech stocks reversed course later in the session as investors found other issues besides AI, such as the government’s latest jobs report and the future direction of interest rates.
Even with a 3% drop in its stock price amid the broader market decline, Nvidia remains valued at $4.4 trillion, more than 10 times its valuation three years ago when OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot, triggering the biggest technological shift since Apple released the iPhone in 2007.
Nvidia’s rapid rise has turned its CEO Jensen Huang into the chief evangelist for the AI revolution, and he sought to use his bully pulpit during a late Wednesday conference call with industry analysts to make a case that the spending to make technology with humanlike intelligence is just beginning.
“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble. From our vantage point, we see something very different,” Huang insisted while celebrating “depth and breadth” of Nvidia’s growth.
Huang is hardly a lone voice in the wilderness. A recent report from Gartner Inc. estimates that worldwide spending on AI will rise to more than $2 trillion next year, a 37% increase from the nearly $1.5 trillion that the research firm expects to be spent this year.
But it remains to be seen if all that money pouring into AI will actually produce all the profits and productivity that proponents have been promising. That leaves the question unanswered if all the real spending that’s happening will be worth it.
The most recent survey of global fund managers by Bank of America showed a record percentage of investors saying companies are “overinvesting.”
Big Tech is already so profitable that many of the most successful finance their spending sprees with their ongoing stream of revenue and cash hoards in their bank accounts. But some companies, such as Meta Platforms and Oracle, are relying more heavily on debt to fund their AI ambitions — a strategy that has raised enough alarms among investors that their stock prices have plunged more dramatically than their peers in recent weeks.
Both Meta and Oracle have suffered more than 20% declines in their stock prices since late October.
But other Big Tech powerhouses leading the way in AI remain just behind Nvidia and iPhone maker Apple in the rankings of the most valuable companies. Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon boast market values currently ranging from $2.3 trillion to $3.6 trillion.
“It is true that valuations are high and that there is some froth in the market; however, the spending on AI is real,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for money manager Northlight Asset Management. “Whether or not the spending turns out to be overdone won’t be known for many years.”