We just got a lackluster jobs report.

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles.

First, there's news fewer than expected people were hired in the month just ended.

Just 50,000 more were hired, and there were major revisions downward to payroll data going back several months.

And watch out for the headlines on the unemployment rate moving down a notch.

Diane Swank is chief economist at the audit tax and advisory firm, KPMG.

We've got 584,000 jobs created in 2025. That is the lowest level since 2020 and the second

lowest level for hiring since the global financial crisis in 2009. What we did

see on the positive side was a rebound in leisure and hospitality leading gains this month,

and that's because of the catch-up due to the government shutdown, flight delays, everything

like that. Also, all of the month of December was sort of the entire holiday season was compressed into one month along with holiday travel. So that showed up in December, that hiring instead of November.

Much will be made of the unemployment rate going in the quote quote, right direction ticking down a notch to 4.4%.

Did it tick down for the right reasons?

Well, participation in labor force actually receded in the month of November, so that's the wrong reason to see the unemployment rate go down.

The other important issue in the overall data is that we've seen those people who are having to accept part-time instead of full-time works well to almost a million this year.

That sort of reflects the underlying stress in the labor market.

The U6, which is that stress measure that we do of unemployment, which includes marginalized workers, that fell to 8.4%, which is still

2.2% above the levels we saw back in 2019. And it's really a sense that the overall unemployment rate

is no longer representative how people feel about the labor market. Essentially, those who have a job are clinging on,

while those who do not have a job inBooks. In a new year, momentum matters.

For small business leaders, every smart decision comes down to cash flow,

which determines where you stand today and how you move forward tomorrow.

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