The labor market is tilting in favor of blue-collar and service workers over white-collar workers.
The new jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that August was a promising time to be job hunting. The The US added 162,000 jobsabout three times the expected profit of 55,000. Growth was widely spread across sectors, with only two major industries losing jobs, both of which were white-collar sectors.
Leisure and hospitality accounted for around 40% of job growth after the sector lost jobs in June and July. The industry has pretty much done that switching between profit and loss in 2026, and typically has high customer churn. Government employment recovered after the decline in July, thanks to local government education.
“There is also seasonality in these two sectors, so I don’t want to read too much into that, but it’s still good to look on the bright side,” said Laura Ullrich, director of North America economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab.
Employment in construction is on the rise. ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud said this demand could be due to both the need for more housing and the data center boom.
“There is a high demand for jobs in everything from construction to pipe welders and electricians,” she says. “There is a lot of demand across the country for people to build and power these facilities.”
Healthcare and social assistance have been and will likely continue to be a driving force in the labor market engine for job growthbecause the US will need more workers to care for its aging population and replace healthcare retirees. The two sectors together created 28,400 jobs in August, or about 18% of total profits.
It is rare these days to see job growth in the information and financial activities. The information sector, which includes large parts of the technology and media industries, rose to about 3.1 million employees at the end of 2022 and has since plummeted. Employment in this sector was about 12% below its peak last August.
“A lot of that has to do with the ways in which AI is showing up in the marketplace,” Bachaud says. “We are seeing some backlash, especially in the information sector, in terms of slowing employment.”
Not all white-collar sectors are losing jobs. Employment in professional and business services increased by 0.7% compared to a year ago. Bachaud said this sector employs a lot of technology workers, like the information sector, and that “the demand for jobs has increased because AI is really changing what types of jobs will be most in demand and, in fact, more than anything else, changing the tasks within jobs.”
Ullrich said that despite positive earnings and robust overall growth, this doesn’t provide much relief job seekersas the workforce percentage is similar to early 2010, and there is not much turnover as people keep their jobs and layoffs remain low.
Have you made a career change, had to save or make another life change while unemployed, or have you been looking for a job for a long time? Contact this reporter to share what your experience in the job market has been like mhoff@businessinsider.com.
