Florida TaxWatch has been keeping an eye on the changing labor market since the Covid-19 pandemic. A November 2023 commentary titled “Florida's Labor Resilience: Navigating the National Cool-Down and Local Market Dynamics,” showed that the national as well as state level labor market shows signs of cooling down. Every year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases a preliminary revision of their job opening and employment numbers for the past year.
On September 9th, 2025, the BLS released their preliminary revision of job openings and employment numbers from April 2024 to March 2025. The revision shows that the U.S. had 911,000 fewer job openings than previously recorded, indicating a weaker labor market over the past year. If these preliminary numbers persist, it will be largest negative revision since the March 2000 revision.
The preliminary revision was released just after another gloomy labor market report by the BLS. Their monthly Employment Situation Summary showed employment increasing by only 22,000 new jobs across the nation in August 2025. In the same release, the BLS revised their June and July 2025 numbers, showing 26,000 fewer jobs than previously reported. The national unemployment rate in July 2025 was 4.3 percent, the highest since late 2021. From January 2025 to August 2025, the U.S. has added fewer than 600,000 jobs.
According to BLS data, Federal government employment and manufacturing employment have seen larger job losses than other industries over the last year --- 97,000 and 78,000 respectively. Survey results from the New York Federal Reserve show that people believe they have only a 45 percent chance of finding a new job if they lose their current job.
Florida’s unemployment rate was 3.7 percent in July 2025, lower than the national rate of 4.3 percent. Florida also ranked third in the most job gains by state in July 2025, adding 134,000 in employment. As of May 2025, there were 1.11 job openings for every unemployed person in Florida. Data shows that Florida’s labor market is better than the national labor market, with an unemployment rate lower than the national rate for 57 consecutive months. Among large metropolitan areas, the BLS reported 2.4 percent lower employment in the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford area in March 2025.
The Federal Reserve meets every month to discuss the federal funds interest rate, which is the rate at which banks lend reserves to each other. This rate is also used to stimulate economic factors like national inflation, purchasing power, and employment. Since January 2025, the federal interest rate has remained unchanged at 4.25 to 4.5 percent. The rates have been steady in hopes of curbing inflation and bringing it down to two percent, as unemployment numbers were not concerning until now. The latest revision data, however, will likely push the Federal Reserve to cut rates in their next meeting this month to 4.00 to 4.25 percent.