[Rexxar]

Here is the official source: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/economicdata/empsit_03062026.pd...

Some of the main categories (page 8 of the pdf):

  - Construction:                          -11.0k
  - Manufacturing:                         -12.0k
  - Transportation and warehousing:        -11.3k
  - Private education and health services: -34.0k
  - Information                            -11.0k
  - Leisure and hospitality                -27.0k

It seems to go down in lots of different sectors.

[JumpCrisscross]

Healthcare was carrying the economy. Any commentary on why that’s failing?

[kermatt]

I come from healthcare staffing.

Contracts were heavily affected by cuts in federal programs that are critical to some rural regions, and uncertainty caused by inconsistent messaging about the future of such programs. Some areas are very dependent facilities that can only survive with public funding.

For example in nursing categories, CNOs (Chief Nursing Officers) would be requesting more staff, but CFOs would block those requests due to changing budget forecasts. The unpredictability of the fed is causing chaos downstream.

There is also a continuing trend to "realign" staff levels post-COVID, but that now is much easier to forecast for compared to the political chaos. In 2026 healthcare, that would not be a reason for attrition at these levels.

[JumpCrisscross]

Thank you. Is there a good reason this is showing up now versus in the 2025 data?

[smallmancontrov]

The cuts didn't happen the moment OBBB was passed on July 4 (ew). Here's a timeline:

https://www.kff.org/medicaid/implementation-dates-for-2025-b...

It looks like some of the big ones landed Jan 1 2026.

[kermatt]

I can't speak to the time frames for the article, but I know that the current administration and its policies had a significant negative impact on our business across CY2025.

I ran the team that maintained our business analytic data, and was also on weekly calls where feedback from our clients about the situation was discussed. There was direct correlation between uncertainty and both a decline in new job postings, as well as a lack of renewing existing job contracts.

When comparing our numbers to those of our publicly traded competitors, all the data showed the same trends.

[avrionov]

Not everyone was laid off immediately in the government. Some people were given 6 months notices, etc. Then the local authorities started to discuss the gap in their budgets. In my town they stopped hiring first and then they decided to cut some positions starting from 2026.

[SoleilAbsolu]

I'm in publicly funded mental health...federal cuts are starting to cause states & counties to either immediately slash what CBOs thought was solid funding for essential services, or to let us/them know to expect significant cuts starting in the next fiscal year.

[lotsofpulp]

I don't see why we should believe any of the data in the first place. At best, I assume good people have been let go and proper procedures are falling by the wayside. At worst, it is being manipulated (even perhaps incompetently).

[ethbr1]

Reality tends to be inconvenient.

[dragonwriter]

A little under half of US healthcare spending is public programs, the President’s signature “One Big Beautiful Bill” made massive cuts to the federal component of that which started impacting in July of last year, consequently....

[JumpCrisscross]

OBBA as the cause requires intermediate steps to show up in this jobs report versus last year. The other comment’s guess at strike effects seems more parsimonious.

[gruez]

Why? Up till the end of last year, congressional Democrats were trying to get the ACA expansions extended, triggering a government shutdown in the process. Even after that plan fizzled out, they were promised a vote to reinstate it, so for hospitals or whatever there was still hope that there would still be funding. There's no real reason why you'd expect everyone to get fired the day that OBBA was passed.

[kingkawn]

No, the major healthcare employers are trying to adjust their staff sizes immediately to avoid later crisis caused by this draconian hack and slash approach to federal funding.

[johnnyanmac]

the intermediate is that the cuts took effect in January.

[yonaguska]

My personal take is that it's just hit a breaking point where people have finally decided that it's not worth the money. Im not the only person I know with an uninsured wife, and only coverage for my kids. If it weren't for my kids, I wouldn't have enrolled in insurance either. The math just doesn't work out for someone relatively young and with no major health issues. And with the government cutting back spending, which you can see that hitting big insurers like UNH directly, the market is getting a little tighter.

[mschuster91]

> The math just doesn't work out for someone relatively young and with no major health issues.

The thing is, bad and expensive health issues can literally come upon you over night. You can get hit by a vehicle or get beaten up with no perpetrator to be held accountable, you can develop an aneurysm, get food poisoning, get pregnant unexpectedly (with all the risk that comes with, including healthcare not being accessible because of anti-abortion BS), or you can simply fall over a step in your own house.

[conartist6]

All those things could happen but the healthcare provider will mug you once a month.

There has to be SOME point where the constant muggings aren't worth it vs the risk, otherwise they would simply demand all our money, knowing we won't say no with our life on the line.

[wraptile]

Agreed and generally insurance would be a value bet between you and the insurance providee with a slight operation overhead. In the US the market is basically circular as the insurance provider also has hands in all related pies so the bet odds are in such awful state that some people take the risk and rely on crazy stuff like gofundme for survival. I'm not an american but this doesn't look like something that can be solved with more market - the odds are just so broken in many cases.

[h2zizzle]

Seems like something that shouldn't be left up to a consumer market.

[arethuza]

"Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune the cost of which should be shared by the community.”

Aneurin Bevan

[nradov]

That's true to an extent, but the majority of US healthcare spending goes to treating chronic conditions caused more by lifestyle choices than misfortune. There's a fundamental issue in public health policy about individual responsibility and whether to charge people more (or potentially even deny care) over factors at least partially under their control. For example, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) allows health plans to charge tobacco users higher premiums. Is that fair? Should we also charge higher premiums to alcohol users or those with sedentary lifestyles? There are no clear right or wrong answers here.

[groundzeros2015]

In practice everyone has vastly different preferences, expectations, and desires different levels of care then.

For example Some people want to see a specific doctor they know in a private session to discuss life and family stresses. Others only go to urgent clinics if they need an immediate medication.

[rootusrootus]

What percentage of the market actually pays it this way? IIRC, somewhere north of a third of Americans are already on a form of single payer healthcare. Most of the remainder are getting it through their job, subsidized to varying degrees. The fraction of the population that actually pays the full premiums out of their own pocket is pretty limited, AFAIK.

[simonh]

I think it's also worth considering that taxpayer funded US government spending on health care is about the same as in a typical single-payer European country. Then many tax payers still have to pay for private health care on top, to actually get health care for themselves.

[bonsai_spool]

> What percentage of the market actually pays it this way?

The only way this can make sense mathematically is if you're including children, seniors, and/or the ill—populations who are unable to work. What is your reference?

[groundzeros2015]

Markets are how our society allocates all its most important resources.

What I think we have now is the most non-market like sector of the economy, with 1/3 of all citizens already receiving government funded healthcare.

[mothballed]

Catastrophic health insurance for most those things is very inexpensive, relatively, but you have to re-buy it every 3 months and then "pre-existing" conditions reset. The expensive insurance is for covering ongoing expenses, as predictable expenses or at least those known 3+ months in advance are the vast vast majority of health care costs.

Realistically catastrophic revolving temporary insurance plus managing what you can in Mexico, plus occasionally paying out of pocket would mitigate the vast majority of yours risks while keeping expense relatively low.

[nradov]

Sure, those things can happen. A lot of younger people will decide to just accept the risk, and then if they get hit by a bad and expensive health issue then they'll go to the ER anyway. Due to EMTALA, most hospitals have to treat them regardless of ability to pay. This is one of the factors causing the US healthcare financing system to collapse.

[magicalist]

> Due to EMTALA, most hospitals have to treat them regardless of ability to pay. This is one of the factors causing the US healthcare financing system to collapse.

They'll only treat you until you're stabilized, though. They won't give you chemo or routine care. If you need to be admitted you're also not covered by the EMTALA.

All emergency medicine, not just that triggered by the EMTALA, is 5-6% of all healthcare spending in the US, so while it contributes, it's not collapsing the healthcare system.

The real problems with it are that it's an unfunded mandate by Congress, just adding to the financial tangling of the healthcare system, and that it's way too often used to treat things that could have been much more cheaply treated in a clinic, but then there are no clinics nearby that take Medicaid and are actually open, so instead, like with so much of our health care system, we choose to solve it the stupid way instead.

[nradov]

Hospital costs attributed to EMTALA are relatively low today. My point is we should expect those costs to grow as more consumers become uninsured. This is one of several factors that will eventually wreck the current healthcare financing system.

[groundzeros2015]

All of that is true. But insurance agains that risk is not worth an infinite amount of money.

[thefreeman]

don't you get a tax penalty if you aren't insured for 100% of the year?

[tzs]

That got remove in Trump's first term.

[ethbr1]

US voter math: remove penalties/taxes + increase benefits = everything is fine

Thus solving the problem.

[burnt-resistor]

Medicare rolled out prior authorization gatekeeping to kill more patients in 6 states: Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington to use the Orwellian-sounding "Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction" (WISeR) that is administered by unaccountable private corporations using AI to deny and delay care. Medicare is a corporate joke that people confuse for single-payer healthcare which it ain't, and so Medicare for all (M4A) would be awful. (Medicare "Advantage" is even worse.)

[larkost]

I can't find a reference for this, but listening to NPR this morning there was an offhand mention that last month there were significant strikes going on, and that those are now resolved, but showed up in the employment numbers for last month.

So that part could just be a blip. The rest seems on-trend.

[joshuaheard]

I read that temporary striking workers were considered a lost job and accounted for 30,000 of the jobs. Plus another 27,000 in health care from the loss of business due to the strike. And the federal government shed 10,000 jobs. That accounts for nearly half the job losses.

[timmytokyo]

In a healthy economy there would be hiring in other industries, helping to offset those numbers.

[cucumber3732842]

>Healthcare was carrying the economy. Any commentary on why that’s failing?

The fact that it's such big part of the economy is a really bad thing because it's "overhead" or "broken windows" for the most part.

And it's falling because people are stretched thin so they're not going to the engaging healthcare unless they truly NEED it. Even if you have "great" insurance contacting that system still costs you money if not every time then on average.

[bodiekane]

I don't think the "broken windows" metaphor is very accurate for healthcare. A lot of healthcare spending is along a gradient of elective vs necessary and some continuum of quality of life improvements.

For instance, I could live with allergies, and all my ancestors just had to, but I have the option to spend money on allergy testing services, medicines, treatments, etc. People spend money on in-home professional care to get better treatment than going alone or relying on family, or spend money on care facilities as appropriate for their circumstances.

We have medicines for depression, anxiety, restless leg syndrome, ADHD, birth control, acne, weight loss, low testosterone, ED, poor sleep, eczema, psoriasis and a million other issues which people in the past, or people in developing countries today, simply had to live with that we have the privilege of having access to treatments for to improve our quality of life.

I know people who are affluent and outwardly "healthy" who spend thousands of dollars per year in the "healthcare" category that's entirely discretionary, but lets them keep looking young and playing tennis at 70 years old, or helps them juggle work, family and fitness at 40.

[Fricken]

Having a 70 year old play tennis is much more expensive than letting him die off and instead have an up and coming 17 year old play tennis. 17 year olds stay healthy and young, and are able to have meaningful life experiences at no extra cost.

Humans weren't designed to last forever, and it's inefficient to push against that constraint, you run into fast diminishing returns, and it leads to maladies and stratification when done at a societal scale. It doesn't matter how much we spend on health care, we're not going to live forever.

[robocat]

Healthcare is a cost not a profit in the economy: the Healthcare sector consumes what is produced by other parts of the economy. Similarly government can't exist without businesses. And a large part of healthcare is dependent on taxation.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Healthcare is a cost not a profit

It’s both. Like transportation and construction. And whether you think it’s a profit or cost center doesn’t change that it contains paying jobs.

[maxerickson]

What do you do about the modest amount I spend on blood pressure medicine making me feel better all the time, which probably makes me more productive at work?

I'm getting more benefit than the cost of that healthcare (I'm asserting that this is true, I feel a lot better with the medicine) and that ends up feeding into the economy.

[robocat]

Good point.

I reckon I'm trying to think about the dependency graph of necessity. I suspect you are too.

A monetary economy has productive sectors and non-productive sectors. Most healthcare is non-productive from the point of view of an economy. Healthcare for workers and future workers is economically productive (from an economy's point-of-view). Maybe my conceptual cleaving is poor (black n white binary splits are usually misleading).

Of course ultimately most of what an economy delivers to us individually is monetarily uneconomic (is art or entertainment necessary?). Me confused.

Now I feel bad that I've wandered off into philosophy (which I usually find interesting but non-useful).

[dehrmann]

There was a strike. That particular number is probably worth ignoring.

[JumpCrisscross]

Ah, this makes sense [1].

[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hr/31000-kaiser-worker...

[zzleeper]

Sad/funny that your comment is at the bottom.

Workers on strike are classified as not employed, so yeah we should ignore that category

[dehrmann]

It's one of the challenges with data. It's technically accurate, and it's useful for trends like productivity and output, but only marginally useful as a gauge of the health of the economy. You also have to remember it for the next jobs report.

[kypro]

> Private education and health services

I'm probably missing something here, but those seem quite unrelated categories, and I'm not sure why anyone would pay for private education these days when we all have access to free AI private tutors?

[JumpCrisscross]

> when we all have access to free AI private tutors?

The parents that stuck their kids in front of a TV in the 80s or handed them an iPad to shut them up in the 2010s think this is a great idea today. Namely, it’s not an AI tutor. It’s an AI babysitter. That’s fine. Parents need breaks, particularly ones who can’t afford childcare. But branding it as anything but a way to mindlessly occupy one’s child is dishonest.

[nradov]

The notion of "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" remains firmly in the realm of science fiction. Maybe it will exist someday, but not today.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/172835/the-diamond-...

[recursive]

The free chatbots I have access to make factually incorrect statements very often. Of the falsifiable statements I've seen come out of them in areas where I know enough, it seems like at least 1 in 10 is objectively wrong in some way. They'll walk it back if pressed. ("you're absolutely right")

I know human teachers aren't perfect, but they seem much better than these things.

[lukeschlather]

Children have no frame of reference to understand when AI is totally making things up. 1:1 instruction is more valuable than ever to teach children to be critical and verify misinformation that AIs subtly interleave.

[jimt1234]

I wonder why "Private education and health services" is down so much. My guess is because federal cuts to health services impacted jobs???

[HaloZero]

Trump has made coming into the US less attractive which is a source of a huge amount of money for colleges and other schools in the US. Foreign tuition is $$$.

Plus cuts to the department of education, non profit spending in general.

That’s just a guess though.

[groundzeros2015]

It’s almost like there are additional causes to consider outside of the latest Trump story.

[mizzao]

Does construction include undocumented workers?

[throwawaypath]

Not sure why you're being down voted, it's a legitimate question. In some places, illegal immigrants constitute a majority of the construction labor.

[groundzeros2015]

Wow but it’s hard to map this data from different sectors on to whatever political news story is top of mind.

[throw310822]

Pretty useless without knowing at least what % of the total they are per category and what type of jobs they are.

[Rexxar]

I saw a lot of comments trying to guess where the job were lost in other comments and I think this give a little more context. I put the original source, there are 42 pages of data, if you want more details.

[throw310822]

Sorry, ofc, thanks for posting this.

[dragonwriter]

The distinction between + and - is useful even without either of those.

[throw310822]

Not really. Is it -2% or -0.01%?