The long-awaited September jobs report arrives
Marketplace
American Public Media
4.6 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The September jobs report finally arrived after a six-week delay, showing employers added 119,000 jobs — well above expectations. The BLS also recorded an unusually strong 80% employer response rate, the highest since 2019. Improved accuracy came as a consequence of the deferred report. Also in this episode: Food service gained 36,000 jobs, America’s brand image hit a new low, and a scholarship celebrated 20 years of supporting Latina students.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Happy Jobs Day, Thursday, everybody. Hey, better late than never, right? From American Public Media, |
| 0:10.8 | this is Marketplace. |
| 0:17.8 | In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizdahl. It is Thursday. Today, the 20th of November. Good as always to have you along, everybody. The headlines for this morning's almost seven weeks delayed September jobs report, as you have heard, not too shabby. A hundred and nineteen thousand new jobs in this economy as the summer of 2025 came to a close. |
| 0:40.9 | That is more than people had been guessing. |
| 0:43.5 | The unemployment rate, though, did nudge up to 4.4%. |
| 0:47.3 | But let's go back to that number of new jobs thing I mentioned a second ago. |
| 0:51.4 | It comes from what's called the Establishment Survey. |
| 0:54.1 | Businesses |
| 0:54.5 | are asked literally how many jobs they added in any given month. And I mentioned that because the Bureau of |
| 1:00.5 | Labor Statistics noted today that the response rates for the September survey were unusually high |
| 1:06.8 | thanks to the government shutdown. And as Marketplace's Justin Ho reports, high response rates are a good thing. |
| 1:14.4 | The BLS gathers data for its establishment survey by sending businesses a form to fill out, asking about head counts. |
| 1:20.5 | But there isn't any law or incentive pushing businesses to respond quickly. |
| 1:24.8 | Usually not all firms fill out the report in time. |
| 1:28.6 | Preston Moy is senior economists with the research group Employ America. |
| 1:31.7 | He says response rates for the initial jobs reports after any given month or sometimes as low as |
| 1:36.5 | 50%. |
| 1:37.4 | But remember, the September report came out nearly seven weeks late. |
| 1:41.6 | So they gave firms more time to fill out their forms. |
| 1:44.1 | And so the first |
| 1:44.9 | release of the data saw a higher collection rate than usual. The BLS says the response rate for the |
| 1:51.4 | September report was more than 80%. That's the highest since late 2019. Courtney Schupert is an economist |
... |
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