The U.S. economy opened 2026 on better footing with the latest jobs report showing employers

added 130,000 jobs in January, and the unemployment rate edged down to 4.3% from 4.4% in December,

a stronger than expected result for last month.

But the data also had newly revised figures that paint an even weaker picture

of last year's performance. The U.S. economy added just 181,000 net jobs last year, about 400,000

fewer than initially reported, and far from the 1.4 million jobs added in 2024. This all comes

as some corporations like Amazon and UPS are announcing tens of

thousands of layoffs to break down all these numbers. And what it all means for the U.S. economy,

we're joined now by Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University.

He's a former chief economist for the Department of Labor. Thanks for being here. We appreciate it.

Thank you. Nice to be here. So we should say 130,000 jobs added is not a strong number. Not long

ago, that number would have been reported as underwhelming. Why have the goalposts shifted?

Well, because job growth all of last year was so weak. So compared to a lot of the weakness we saw

in 2025, 130,000 is a pretty good number. So relative to that. But another misleading thing about

that, and this has been true for a while, almost all of the job creation is limited to a few key sectors,

like health care, social assistance, and this month construction and professional services.

There were other sectors that actually had job loss.

And what are those? What sectors remain under pressure?

Last month, we saw declines in information technology, in financial services,

and continuing declines in the federal government. The federal government, because of Doge

activities and other cutbacks, federal government shed about 300,000 workers last year. They dropped

another 33 or 34,000 last month.

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