The U.S. insurance industry dropped about 700 positions in September compared with August, based on preliminary the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Total employment sat at roughly 3.01mn, basically flat year over year, which says a lot about how choppy hiring has been.
Across the wider economy, nonfarm payrolls added 119,000 jobs. The unemployment rate hit 4.4%, up from 4.3% in August and 4.1% a year earlier.
Health care, food services, drinking places, and social assistance pushed job gains. Federal government roles, transportation, and warehousing pulled the numbers in the opposite direction.
Stephen Cooper at the National Council on Compensation Insurance said the rise in unemployment mostly came from higher labor force participation. More job seekers jumped in, especially younger workers.
Insurance payrolls are reported monthly on a seasonally adjusted basis. Breakouts by segment show up unadjusted and run a month behind. That lag hides some of the volatility until the data settles.
From July to August, the only insurance segment that actually grew was pharmacy benefit managers and other third party administrators. They added around 1,200 jobs. Everywhere else slipped.
Direct title insurance and other direct insurance roles stayed flat, but reinsurance carriers cut 300 positions. Agencies and brokerages lost 900. Claims adjusting shrank by another 1,400.
The steepest drops hit direct life, health, and medical carriers, which cut 6,500 jobs. Direct P&C carriers followed with 4,200 fewer roles.
August’s early numbers show the industry down about 5,550 positions, so the slide was already underway before September landed.
BLS said the September release arrived late because of the federal government shutdown. October and November data will hit on December 16. October numbers won’t include household survey data because it wasn’t collected during the shutdown, and that gap won’t be fixed retroactively. The agency extended November’s collection period to catch up.
Federal government employment kept slipping in September, down another 3,000 jobs and now 97,000 below the January peak.
The establishment survey still counts people on paid leave or severance as employed, so the drag comes from actual cuts, not accounting tricks.
Most major industries barely moved. Mining, quarrying, oil and gas extraction, construction, manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, information, financial activities, professional services, and a cluster of other service categories all sat basically flat through the month. The labor market felt stuck in neutral in a lot of places.
Private sector wages kept grinding upward. Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose 9 cents to $36.67, a 0.2% bump.
Over the past year, wages climbed 3.8%. Production and nonsupervisory workers saw an 8 cent increase in September, up to $31.53, a 0.3% move.
Hours barely budged. The average private sector workweek stayed at 34.2 hours. Manufacturing held close to 39.9 hours, with overtime steady at 2.9 hours. Production and nonsupervisory workers edged up a tenth of an hour to 33.7 hours.
Payroll revisions pulled the summer numbers down. July’s job gains dropped from 79,000 to 72,000. August’s shift went from a 22,000 gain to a 4,000 loss. Combined, that’s 33,000 fewer jobs than originally reported. The revisions came from late business submissions and updated seasonal factors, the kind of cleanup that often changes the story after the fact.
The federal shutdown pushed the release of September jobs data more than six weeks past its usual date. The lapse in appropriations didn’t hit everything equally.
Household survey data for September wrapped on schedule before the shutdown hit, but the establishment survey came together in two parts, which gave the report an unusual shape.
Some businesses submitted their September numbers electronically during the shutdown. When BLS combined those with the pre shutdown collection, the establishment survey ended up with an 80.2% response rate. That’s higher than normal and a weird byproduct of the disruption.
BLS said there will be no October 2025 Employment Situation report. October’s establishment survey data gets folded into November’s release, while the household survey went uncollected entirely and won’t be reconstructed. That gap stays.
For November, both surveys get an extended collection period and extra processing time. BLS plans to publish the combined November report on December 16, 2025 at 8:30 a.m. ET. Agencies, analysts, and anyone trying to track labor trends will have to navigate the data jump.
