U.S. job growth by sector

This chart compares ten years of U.S. payroll employment in healthcare, professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, manufacturing, retail trade, and government. Each sector starts at 100 in the calendar month ten years before the refresh date, so the lines compare cumulative growth rather than sector size. The data are monthly and seasonally adjusted.

Latest observation: 2026-09-01·Expected cadence: Monthly

Work Economy

October 2016–September 2026. Selected sectors; healthcare excludes social assistance. Government includes public-sector health jobs.

What does it show?

Over this window, healthcare employment changed by +19.6%, compared with -2.2% in retail trade.

Methodology

Monthly, seasonally adjusted U.S. BLS Current Employment Statistics payroll counts, in thousands, distributed by FRED: healthcare (CES6562000101), professional and business services (USPBS), leisure and hospitality (USLAH), manufacturing (MANEMP), retail trade (USTRADE), government (USGOVT), and total nonfarm payrolls (PAYEMS). Healthcare excludes social assistance and public-sector health jobs, which are classified under government. These are employer industries, not occupations or unique people; multiple jobholders can be counted more than once. The selected sectors are mutually exclusive but do not cover the whole economy. Each sector is independently indexed to its October 2016 value = 100: 100 × current payrolls / baseline payrolls. An index of 120 means 20% more jobs than at the baseline, not a larger sector or 20% year-over-year growth. The window starts in the calendar month ten years before the refresh date (2026-10-04), currently October 2016, and ends in September 2026, the latest completed month available in every series. Every monthly observation is retained. Missing baselines or internal months fail the refresh; no interpolation or carry-forward is used. History is rebuilt from the current revised release on each refresh.

U.S. job growth by sector

Methodology

Sources