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Getting a clear pulse on the US labour market has become difficult lately. Investors usually look at the monthly employment report for guidance, but the longest American government shutdown in the nation’s history has postponed its release. The shutdown, which has now stretched to almost one and a half months, has paralysed statistical agencies including the Bureau of Labour Statistics. The October employment data, originally due last Friday but not yet released, was the latest victim of circumstance. Given the absence of these important economic metrics, investors have turned to alternative data sources.
Alternative job cuts vs job openings
The MacroEdge Job Cuts Tracker shows a sharp rise in layoffs in October 2025, reaching around 154,600 job cuts, the highest level since early 2025. The figure is compiled from a combination of publicly announced layoff notices sourced from DailyJobCuts.com, WARN notices filed with states, TrueUp data, and Google News alerts, offering near real-time insight into corporate head-count reductions. This marks a clear acceleration from previous months, suggesting that companies are becoming more cautious amid slower consumption and still high interest rates.
The LinkUp job openings data shows that job openings have continued to decline steadily since their 2022 peak, now hovering around 2.5 million, roughly in line with pre-pandemic averages. LinkUp’s dataset is compiled by scraping publicly posted job listings directly from employer career websites.
In line with the LinkUp data, Indeed reported their lowest job postings index for the US since February 2021. This represents a decline of around 3.5% since mid-August, which is the most recent point covered by Bureau of Labour Statistics data.
Of course, this data only covers parts of the labour market, or covers the entire market, but only from a specific perspective of the data and data sources. For instance, job cuts reported on company websites or press releases, or online postings scraped from web portals. They can highlight trends early but don’t tell the full story across all industries and wage levels.
Source: MacroEdge
Source: LinkUp / Appollo Academy
Alternative total job market data covering both sides of the equation: the cuts and the newly created jobs - net changes and overall NFP levels
Alternative private data on total employment, both in terms of net monthly changes and aggregate non-farm payroll (NFP) levels, tells a consistent story: the US labour market has cooled significantly but remains solid. Job creation has slowed to a more sustainable pace, with employment gains stabilising at lower levels after the post-pandemic surge.
The Revelio Labs chart shows that monthly non-farm employment gains have been trending upward again since May 2025. The data is drawn from over 100 million US professional-profile records, covering roughly two-thirds of all employed individuals in the country, besides capturing also online job postings, and WARM layoff notices.
The Truflation estimate of the official Non-Farm-Payrolls tracks total employment levels and depicts a similar trajectory in the respective chart. After peaking in late 2024, total employment dipped modestly through mid-2025 before stabilising and showing signs of recovery by October. This Employment Index is built from a multi-source aggregation of public and commercial datasets, covering millions of data points and updated monthly.
So, the big question is: did we reach a new equilibrium between supply and demand in the job market due to a much lower labour supply because of the current immigration policy under President Trump that would balance out much better than in earlier years the reduction on in labour demand?
Source: Truflation / Syz
Source: Revelio Labs / Appollo Academy
More traditional private labour market data showed mixed signals last week
On the more traditional side of the private labour market data, the ADP job’s number was substantially above expectations with a net job creation of +42k in October. The report is based on anonymised payroll data covering more than 26 million US private-sector employees and is produced in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab (Stanford Lab). The rebound suggests the labour market may be reaching a new equilibrium, marked by fewer job postings and a limited pool of available workers—trends partly driven by renewed immigration policies and a tighter labour supply. However, the gains were modest and confined largely to sectors like trade, transportation, and utilities, while professional services and information recorded net job losses.
On the other hand, the latest Challenger, Gray & Christmas report painted a weaker picture of the labour market, showing a sharper increase in announced job cuts than in potential hirings. The firm reported that announced layoffs tripled in October, reaching 153,074—the highest monthly total since the pandemic five years ago. Drawing on data from employer announcements, press releases, SEC filings, and state WARN notices, Challenger estimated year-to-date job cuts at 1.1 million. The recent government shutdown likely distorted the data to some extent.
Still, the report wasn’t entirely negative: hiring plans rose in October, as is typical for this time of year, marking the strongest increase in over a year—though they remain below the peaks seen in 2023–24.
Source: AMD, Challenger, Gray & Christmas / Syz
According to the Fed’s estimate, the current equilibrium nonfarm payrolls stands at 30K
The Dallas Fed now estimates that only 30,000 new jobs per month are needed to maintain labour market equilibrium—a steep drop from the 2023 peak of about 250,000 and from the long-standing rule of thumb of roughly 100,000 per month in “normal” conditions. This measure, known as “break-even employment”, represents the pace of job creation needed to keep the unemployment rate stable. The decline reflects a major reversal in immigration flows and a cyclical softening in labour force participation, both of which have slowed labour force supply. In essence, fewer workers now enter or stay in the job market, so fewer job openings and finally hires are required to maintain balance. This view was also supported by other research, e.g. done by researchers at the American Enterprise Institute (see Edelberg et al. 2025).
This suggests that recent payroll gains, while modest compared to previous years, are not particularly alarming. They seem to be close to the equilibrium and still consistent with a balanced labour market. The shift also underscores the growing importance of real-time demographic data in labour analysis, as traditional models lag post-pandemic population dynamics. In short, slower job gains seem no longer to imply weakness as in earlier days, they look set to simply reflect a slower but likely more sustainable speed limit for employment growth in today’s US economy—something that the US central bank aims to achieve.
Source: Dallas Federal Reserve / Edelberger et al. / Appollo Academy
The San Francisco Fed’s US labour market stress index shows no signs of “stress”
The San Francisco Fed’s US Labour Market Stress Index shows no meaningful signs of strain. The indicator has been trending downward from slightly elevated levels, remaining comfortably below the SF-Fed recession threshold. The index is derived from state-level employment, wage, and unemployment data, capturing how many US states experience significant labour-market deterioration at any given time. In other words, while the labour market has clearly cooled, it is far from entering “stress” territory.
A still solid but cooler labour market is exactly what the Fed wants: dampening of economic activity and, as such, of inflationary pressures, without an economic downturn. And so far, it seems according to the analysed data above, that this goal is achievable from a labour market’s point of view.
However, the persistence of inflationary pressures remains concerning, both for policymakers and households. The ISM composite price index shows that business price pressures have stabilised but remain elevated compared to pre-COVID norms, pointing to a continuation of the upward trends seen in CPI and the PCE figures recently. This suggests that progress to lower inflation has stalled rather than reversed.
The latest University of Michigan survey confirms this tension: consumer sentiment has weakened again, while five-year inflation expectations have ticked higher and 1-year expectations stay elevated. Households seem to doubt that inflation will fully return to the Fed’s 2% target anytime soon, a sign that inflation psychology is proving sticky. This is not supportive to consumer confidence, and it remains key to see how the consumers will start to spend once the US shutdown will be lifted and the sentiment should rebound into the Christmas season.
