US employers cut a surprising 92,000 jobs last month

Описание: (6 Mar 2026)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chicago - 6 March 2026
++SOUNDBITES SEPARATED BY BLACK++
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Diane Swonk, KPMG Chief Economist:
“We saw the jobs report come out with a very weak number. Ninety‑two thousand jobs were shed during the month, and the one pillar of the economy, healthcare and social assistance, actually lost jobs. That's because there was a strike across much of California and in Hawaii in the Kaiser healthcare system, and that alone shaved 27,000 jobs off of the total. We did see a slight downward revision to January, although 126,000 was not much from what the 130,000 we saw previously. More importantly, is the unemployment rate actually edged up, even though participation in the labor force fell. That's a bad combination. What we saw was the number of people who were employed fell along with the number of people who were unemployed rose."
++BLACK FRAMES++
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Diane Swonk, KPMG Chief Economist:
“What we're really dealing with is a one‑legged stool. At this point in time, the U.S. economy labor market is being supported by healthcare and social assistance, and having a strike in that one‑legged stool all of a sudden reveals all the red everywhere else. I think that's very important to remember is that that has been not only the primary driver, it more than accounted for all of the gains that we saw in employment, which were marginal in 2025.”
++BLACK FRAMES++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Diane Swonk, KPMG Chief Economist:
“We have seen extraordinary uncertainty in the economy on everything from tariffs and changes in tariffs, which are still a work in progress. This was before the survey was taken, well before the strikes in Iran. But we also have uncertainty about how AI will reshape business models out there. We did see a surge in layoff announcements late last year. That's still not showing up in unemployment claims, but it doesn't mean it couldn't be suppressing payrolls already. That's what we are also seeing, everything from professional business services to finance are shedding jobs. In the tech sector, we continue to shed jobs. That's important. That's been shedding jobs for some time, even though they are putting a lot of resources into AI. Some of it is productivity gains, but that's also because they need to have more cash flow to build the data centers, which don't create many jobs.”
++BLACK FRAMES++
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Diane Swonk, KPMG Chief Economist:
“What we've seen is it's very unusual. I call it a jobless boom. We've seen economic growth without major job gains. And in fact, once the final data on 2025 comes out in early 2027, it may even show that we had a payroll recession that we shed jobs in 2025 overall, rather than added 181,000. We're within the range of zero right now. And what's very hard is we are in a place where because of curbs in immigration and aging demographics, we don't need to generate many jobs to hold the unemployment rate steady, but in the month of February, that was not the case. We didn't even generate enough jobs to hold the unemployment rate steady when that break-even for unemployment has fallen so low. It's anywhere from negative 20,000 to positive 40,000, shedding 92,000 jobs pushed up the unemployment rate.”
++EDIT ENDS ON SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
The weak jobs report underscores what KPMG Chief Economist Diane Swonk calls a “jobless boom,” with an economy unsettled by tariff uncertainty, AI‑driven restructuring and strikes in healthcare exposing just how fragile hiring has become.


The unemployment rate blipped up to 4.4%.






Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...