STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Employers added 151,000 jobs in February. That's according to today's jobs report from the Labor Department. And 151,000 is a fairly healthy number, although it does not reflect the economic turmoil of the past several weeks. This is a snapshot of the economy - useful, but ever so slightly out of date. NPR's Scott Horsley is here. Good morning, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: So what is in and what is out of this snapshot?
HORSLEY: Well, the monthly jobs report is always based on a survey that's taken around the middle of the month, and that timing is important here because a lot of the federal jobs cuts - federal government job cuts began around 14 February - a Friday - which some people have referred to as the Saint Valentine's Day massacre.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
HORSLEY: People who got their walking papers that Friday are still counted as employed in this February jobs report. The overall report actually shows somewhat more job growth in February than the month before, when cold, snowy weather was blanketing much of the country and keeping a lot of construction workers idle, for example. But even though the report looks pretty good on the surface, there are some warning signs out there.
INSKEEP: OK. When you look below the surface, what are the warning signs that you see?
HORSLEY: Yeah. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas keeps a running tally of layoff notices, and its count for February shows the biggest job cuts since 2020, which is, you know, the early months of the pandemic. Andrew Challenger says there were 172,000 layoffs announced last month, and that includes more than 62,000 in the federal government.
ANDREW CHALLENGER: This is a really big number in terms of what we've ever recorded. The fact that we've reached that level so quickly this year is surprising to us and certainly something worth taking note of.
HORSLEY: Now, the official jobs report today shows just 10,000 federal jobs cut last month, which we know is a fraction of the real total. We also know the Trump administration is considering much more widespread layoffs as it seeks to radically downsize the federal workforce.
INSKEEP: Yeah. And it's numbers that couldn't affect the employment numbers in a measurable way. So what would that radical downsizing look like?
HORSLEY: The administration reportedly wants to cut tens of thousands of jobs, for example, from both the VA and the IRS. The IRS already cut more than 6,000 workers last month. Eddie Walker represents some of those workers at an IRS office in Austin, Texas.
EDDIE WALKER: Of course, there's a lot of crying. I'm looking at some of the emails and stuff I've got. Like, they're ripping apart my work family. I left a job of 13 years to come here, and what do I get? How am I going to survive? I'm a single mom.
HORSLEY: This is obviously painful for the affected workers. Some context is important, though. There are about 2.4 million federal workers, not counting the military and the post office. That's about 1.5% of the overall U.S. workforce.
INSKEEP: Oh, thanks for the reminder the vast majority of people are working - state and local government or whatever or in the private sector, of course. So how is the private sector holding up?
HORSLEY: Yeah. Restaurants and bars cut about 27,000 jobs last month. Temporary services cut jobs as well. There's been a lot of whiplash around the president's trade policy. I mean, just this week, we saw tariffs imposed then relaxed then mostly suspended on Mexico and Canada. Andrew Challenger says a lot of private sector businesses are considering their own job cuts.
CHALLENGER: There's just been this extra uncertainty that's entered into some industries around tariffs, around potential trade wars. We're seeing big announcements from very large Fortune 500 companies this month that are tuning down their growth forecasts for the next three or four years.
HORSLEY: So it's just not an environment that encourages a lot of hiring.
INSKEEP: NPR's Scott Horsley, thanks.
HORSLEY: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
