Name: U.S. economy unexpectedly loses 92,000 jobs in February
Uploaded: 2026-03-06T23:01:21.000Z
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We are back with some breaking economic data and it is big.

Past simple

The US economy unexpectedly lost 92,000 jobs in February.

The comparative

The unemployment rate inched higher to 4.4%.

NBC News senior business correspondent Christine Romans is here to break down the numbers along with Caleb silver.

He's invested PD's editor in chief and chief business editor of People, Inc.

Now, what we were expecting, we thought what maybe a gain of 50,000, not a drop of nearly 100,000.

This is a soft patch in hiring and there are some revisions here to tell you about.

You actually had a loss of 92,000 jobs in the month.

That was after last month was really only 126.

In December, this was another loss of about 17,000 jobs.

But you can see what this trend looks like here.

Last year we saw an economy that was basically at a standstill in terms of job creation, the weakest job creation last year of any year.

Then we thought there was this momentum in January, but it looks like it really has faded here.

You had some health care strikes and you just had companies, frankly, that have been grappling with trade and tariff issues and kind of just all kinds of cross currents in the economy for months now that don't look like they were hiring.

What does it tell us about the jobs market right now?

Yeah, we were in a slow hire, slow fire environment.

Now I feel like it's melting a little bit when you see these steep revisions and then you see a big drop.

Now February is seasonally weak, generally speaking, and it was cold and there were strikes.

But still, this shows that more companies are letting go of workers.

Might be in 2000, 5000, 10,000 here, but the momentum is picking up in this jobless rate.

Still only at 4.4% is not an accurate reflection of how sensitive people feel about the labor economy right now.

Christine, when we look at it by industry, what is it we're seeing?

Yeah, you're looking at health care job losses there.

I'm going to put this back on here so you can see where that jobless rate is historically still 4.4% still.

You saw information, jobs lost, you guys.

You saw federal government, no surprise, 10,000 jobs lost there.

That's because this administration is trying to, trying to lay off and cut federal government jobs.

Social services up 9,000, but leisure and hospitality down 27,000.

That could very well because of cold weather as well.

But we're going to need to watch this very, very carefully, you guys, because there's so much going on in the economy for consumers to be worried about, especially now with new upheaval in the Middle east.

And you've had for a long time what economists call a no hire, no fire kind of job market.

It looks like there might have been a little bit more firing.

And Christine, obviously February 28th is when the war with Iran started.

So these job numbers are not impacted at all by this.

But on top of that, we have the surging oil prices.

I mean, talk about what we're seeing with that and that mix of this jobs report plus the oil numbers, what that means for the economy.

Well, we've got wages that are still growing faster than inflation.

But the backdrop of all of this is energy prices that are rising very, very quickly.

You've got energy prices here that are at $85 a barrel for crude oil today.

It's 67 is where before the strikes in Iran.

And you've got gas prices that continue to charge higher very, very quickly.

That's going to be something that consumers, no question, no consumers and businesses will be grappling with in the days ahead.

Caleb, is this a conundrum for the Federal Reserve now?

And we're going to get an inflation report next week that's going to reflect some of these rising oil prices, won't capture it completely, but

They're probably not going to do anything until we get a new Fed chair and the president has formally nominated Kevin Warshaw.

Wait till June maybe for a rate cut, but they're in a tough spot right now.

All right, Caleb and Christine breaking down this breaking news for us.

And remember, stay updated on breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or watch live on our YouTube channel.