We're excited to share details on the new enhancements and features added to Catalyst and Insights/Insights+ this month. Every update we make is grounded in feedback from our users. Whether you're prospecting for new accounts, managing an existing book, or benchmarking benefits for a client, there's something meaningful here for you.

Catch up on all the new features and updates:

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Catalyst

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Integration — Brokers using Microsoft Dynamics can now push companies and contacts directly from Catalyst into their CRM, consistent with the existing Salesforce and HubSpot workflows.

• Construction Risk Data — Commercial Search now includes property-level Construction Risk intelligence within the employer snapshot, covering building details, valuation, location, and sales history, with a dedicated summary section for quick risk assessment.

• Expanded Alert Triggers — Alert notifications now cover job changes, broker and carrier changes, renewal dates, and retention risk signals.

• For You Page Personalization — You can now set location, industry, and company size preferences, so relevant searches are surfaced immediately on login.

• Salesforce ID Matching — The Salesforce integration now supports matching Salesforce ID fields, improving sync accuracy and reducing duplicate records.

• Opportunity & Signals Enhancements — The Opportunity & Signals tab now includes broker and carrier tenure flags, premium and commission trends with year-over-year comparisons, and enrollment changes drawn from 5500 filing data.

• State Legislative Activity in Pulse — The Pulse news feed now surfaces state legislative bill activity, keeping users informed of policy developments relevant to their prospects and clients.

• Employer Search Filter Additions — Employer Search now includes filters for Broker Compensation, Premium Range, and Missing Filings.

• OSHA Risk Rating Filter — You can now filter Commercial P&C employers by OSHA Risk Rating, from Very Low to Very High, for faster compliance-based targeting.

• LinkedIn Fallback Search — When a contact has no personal LinkedIn profile on file, clicking the LinkedIn icon now opens a people search filtered by company and last name.

• Snapshot PDF Exports Include Phone Numbers — Revealed phone numbers now appear in the Key Contacts section of exported PDFs, with the most reachable contacts prioritized at the top.

• Consolidated Settings Page — Account, company, and preference settings have been merged into a single Settings page for easier profile management.

• Redesigned Dashboard and Portal Home — Both the Catalyst dashboard and portal home page have been refreshed with cleaner layouts, surfacing recent activity and making navigation faster from login.

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Insights/Insights+

• Flexible Rate Availability in Request Form — The Insights+ request form now supports a flexible Rate Availability section, allowing you to choose between full premium and contribution data, benchmark rates, or employee-paid premiums only — so submissions are no longer blocked when full rate data isn't available.

• Two-Tier Rate Structure Support — Insights+ now supports a two-tier rate structure (EE and EE+Family) in addition to the existing three- and four-tier options.

• Five New Voluntary Benefit Lines — Hospital Indemnity, Cancer Insurance, Pet Insurance, Student Loan Assistance, and FSA have been added to the Voluntary Offerings section.

• Medical Plan Reordering and Deletion — You can now drag and reorder medical plans within the Insights+ side stepper and delete plans with a confirmation prompt, with all changes reflected consistently across the stepper, plan detail screens, and final submission.

• Award Download Progress Modal — A new progress modal now appears when downloading award files, providing visual confirmation that the file is being prepared and preventing duplicate clicks during packaging.

• Refreshed Insights Home Page — The Insights home page has been updated with a cleaner layout and improved search helper text.

• Improved Form Validation — The Insights+ wizard now validates employer contribution amounts against total premiums to prevent percentages from exceeding 100%, caps the Aggregate Risk Corridor field to prevent data entry errors, and routes brokers directly to flagged sections when errors are identified on review or submit.

• Hyperlinked Company Names in Report History — Company names on the Insights Report History grid are now hyperlinked, making it faster to navigate from a report row directly to the relevant company.

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That's a wrap! Stay tuned for what's coming next month.

What’s New in Insights and Insights+

We’re excited to share the latest updates to Insights and Insights+ for 2026. Each year, we take partner feedback and turn it into meaningful improvements to our benchmarking tools, and this year is no exception.  

This year’s enhancements reflect exactly what you’ve been asking for: more granular benchmarking options, expanded coverage across emerging benefit areas, and deeper comparisons that strengthen your client conversations. These aren’t just new features; they’re tools designed to help you win more business, advise with greater confidence, and support every recommendation with the most accurate data available.  

We’re proud of these new enhancements, and we’re just getting started. There’s much more coming throughout the year as we continue investing in making Insights and Insights+ the most powerful benchmarking resources available.

Here’s what’s new:

Insights+

•  More granular employer size benchmarking options, expanding from the previous size groupings (100–499 and 500+) to:
  
  • 100–249
    
  • 250–499
  • 500–999
  • 1,000+
• New 3-tier and 4-tier rate + contribution benchmarking
  
  • 4-tier: Employee / Employee + Spouse / Employee + Children / Employee + Family
  • 3-tier: Employee / Employee + Dependent / Employee + Family
• View Insights+ reports directly inside your portal, making it easier to navigate, analyze, edit, and share instantly with colleagues and clients.

• AI-Powered Benefits Assistant — You can now ask plain-language questions about your clients' benefits data and reports directly getting instant, accurate answers without digging through pages of data manually.  

• The Benefits Award is now part of every Broker's Toolkit
  
  • After watching thousands of employers earn recognition through the program, we decided the award should be a standard part of every broker's toolkit. If your client qualifies, the badge and core award components are now available to instantly download, share, and celebrate with your client.

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Insights

• Expanded benchmarking for alternative benefit delivery methods, including:
  
  • Firm-paid through reference-based pricing
  • Narrow network plans
  • Direct primary care (DPC)
  • Specialty provider networks
• New data visibility into waiting periods
• New menopause care reporting
• Ancillary lines split into dedicated pages for clearer benchmarking and navigation:
  
  • Dental
  • Vision
  • Disability
  • Life Insurance
• Carrier market share visibility added to each page
  
  • Shows top carriers by market share based on the selected region
• New dental benchmarking metric: orthodontia (ortho) maximums
• New vision benchmarking metric: percentiles for max reimbursement
  
  • Lenses
  • Contacts
• New disability benchmarking detail
  
  • STD elimination period shown in days
  • LTD elimination period shown in days
• New retiree benefit reporting
  
  • Medicare Advantage (MA) retiree benefit availability
  • Whether MA resulted in lower cost per retiree

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Hiring has never been cheap. But for many organizations today, it has quietly become far more expensive than traditional recruiting metrics suggest.

Most companies track time-to-fill and cost-per-hire. These metrics are familiar, easy to report, and widely benchmarked. What they don’t capture is the full organizational cost of an open or recently filled role — and how benefit perception, retention, and productivity are deeply tied to that number.

When recruiting effort, productivity loss, onboarding time, and early turnover risk are fully considered, the true cost of hiring for professional roles often reaches $80,000 to $90,000 per hire. For many HR and finance leaders, that figure is surprising. The reality is that most hiring models are incomplete by design.

Why Traditional Cost-Per-Hire Models Underestimate Hiring Costs

Cost-per-hire calculations typically focus on direct expenses. Recruiter fees, job advertising, background checks, and onboarding costs are straightforward to track and easy to justify in a budget review.

The problem is that these line items represent only a fraction of the total impact.

The largest drivers of hiring cost tend to be indirect and dispersed across the organization. Extended vacancies delay output. Teams redistribute work, creating burnout and inefficiency. Managers spend time filling gaps instead of driving strategic initiatives. New hires take months to reach full productivity. And roles filled under pressure carry a higher likelihood of early turnover.

When these factors are included, organizations frequently underestimate the true cost of hiring by 30 to 50 percent. The impact rarely appears as a single expense line. Instead, it shows up as slower execution, missed growth opportunities, and persistent retention challenges.

Time-to-Fill Is a Compounding Business Cost

Time-to-fill is often treated as a static recruiting metric — something to optimize, but not something that actively accumulates cost. In reality, every day a role remains open increases organizational drag.

Across industries, typical time-to-fill ranges look like this:

• Administrative roles: 20–40 days

• Professional and technical roles: 40–60 days

• Senior leadership roles: 60–90+ days

During that time, work doesn’t disappear. Output is delayed or redistributed. Overtime increases. Manager attention shifts away from growth initiatives. Team velocity slows. These effects compound quietly, making vacancies far more expensive than they appear on paper.

Once a role is filled, the cost accumulation doesn’t stop. Onboarding and ramp-up often extend the total time-to-productivity window to 90 to 180 days. Until that point, teams continue to operate below capacity.

This is how a role with a $120,000 salary can translate into an $80,000 or greater organizational cost, even before factoring in turnover risk.

Early Turnover Magnifies Hiring Costs

Turnover inside the first 12 months is one of the most expensive and least visible hiring failures. The costs are rarely isolated or formally reported, yet the impact is significant.

When an employee leaves early, the organization absorbs:

• The full recruiting cost again

• Another vacancy period

• A second ramp-up cycle

• Lost institutional knowledge

• Reduced team morale

Early turnover effectively doubles many of the hidden costs associated with hiring. It also creates skepticism around recruiting effectiveness, even when the underlying issue isn’t talent quality.

In many cases, the root cause isn’t compensation or role mismatch. It’s misaligned expectations and poor understanding of total rewards.

Benefits Play a Bigger Role in Retention Than Most Companies Realize

Benefits consistently rank as the second most important reason employees stay with or leave an employer, yet they are one of the most misunderstood components of total compensation.

Research shows that employees undervalue their benefits by nearly 50 percent. When employees don’t understand the value of what they receive, even strong benefit plans fail to influence retention, recruiting conversations, or offer acceptance decisions.

This disconnect has tangible consequences. Employees who underestimate their benefits are more likely to explore external opportunities. Candidates hesitate during offer negotiations. Hiring cycles lengthen. Time-to-fill increases.

None of this requires increasing benefit spend. It requires credible context.

Why Total Compensation Statements Rarely Change Behavior

Most organizations rely on total compensation statements to communicate benefits value. While well-intentioned, these statements often fail to change perception or behavior.

The reason is simple: information alone does not create credibility.

Employees are not asking how much their employer spends. They are asking whether their benefits are competitive compared to peers. Without external context, internal summaries and dollar totals feel abstract and unconvincing.

Effective benefits communication requires three elements:

• Peer-aligned benchmarks

• Independent validation

• Clear, easy-to-understand scoring

Without these, even objectively competitive plans are perceived as average, or worse.

The Problem With Most Benefits Benchmarking

Many employers attempt to solve this gap with benchmarking. Unfortunately, most benchmarking tools introduce new problems.

Broker-aligned benchmarks reflect the book of business they support. Carrier-driven data emphasizes product placement. Self-reported surveys lack consistency and comparability. As a result, employers struggle to trust the results or use them confidently in internal conversations.

When benchmarking lacks independence, it fails to provide the credibility employees and leaders are seeking.

Independent Benefits Benchmarking: A Clearer Way Forward

Independent benefits benchmarking changes the conversation. Instead of focusing on plan design alone, it answers a more relevant question:

How does our benefits package actually compare to employers like us?

Mployer provides the only independent benefits benchmarking in the U.S., free from broker or carrier influence. Organizations use it to identify retention risk, improve benefit perception without increasing spend, support recruiting narratives, and assess eligibility for the Mployer Benefit Award.

The results are often eye-opening, particularly for companies that believe their benefits are “about average.” In many cases, the data reveals hidden strengths that simply weren’t being communicated effectively.

What This Means for HR, Total Rewards, and Finance Leaders

Rising hiring costs, extended time-to-fill, and persistent turnover are rarely isolated problems. They are symptoms of broader gaps in how organizations position, communicate, and validate their total rewards strategy.

Benefits are not just an expense line. They are a lever for retention, recruiting efficiency, and productivity — when employees understand their value and trust the comparison.

A short benchmarking conversation can help clarify where your benefits truly stand, how employees likely perceive them, and whether your organization qualifies for independent benchmarking and the Mployer Benefit Award.

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The PBM Challenge in Today's Market

(An easy to understand guide)

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Prescription drug costs have surged dramatically in recent years, placing increasing strain on employer-sponsored health plans. Between 2000 and 2020, retail prescription drug spending in the U.S. nearly doubled (a 91% increase) and continues to climb—outpacing most other healthcare cost categories. The rise stems from two primary factors: expensive new specialty therapies (like weight-loss and biologic treatments) and the opaque role of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) in setting prices. What makes matters worse is that Americans pay dramatically more than people in other high-income nations—U.S. drug prices average 2.78 times higher than in 33 comparable countries, and brand-name drugs can cost more than four times as much. This steep cost trajectory and global overpayment emphasize why understanding and managing PBMs has become essential for employers aiming to control healthcare spend and protect employees.

How PBMs Actually Work

When an employer designs its health plan, it either chooses a PBM directly or selects a carrier that already has a PBM embedded in its plan. From there, the PBM takes control of the prescription drug benefit. They build the formulary—the list of drugs that are covered—and negotiate with manufacturers to decide which drugs make the list. By narrowing coverage to certain products, PBMs gain leverage to demand better deals. They also restrict which pharmacies are in-network, again concentrating volume to maximize bargaining power.

This means PBMs effectively set the market, costs, and tiers employees experience: whether a drug falls into Tier 1 with a $10 copay or Tier 4 with a 25% coinsurance is dictated by the PBM’s design. On the back end, PBMs collect rebates from drug makers. A rebate is essentially a kickback payment from the manufacturer to the PBM, offered in exchange for favorable placement of a drug on the formulary or higher expected utilization. For example, if two similar drugs treat the same condition, the manufacturer willing to pay a higher rebate is more likely to have their drug chosen. Some portion of these rebates is passed back to the employer to lower plan costs, but a significant share is often kept by the PBM—one of the biggest transparency concerns in the system

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How Drug Tiers and Payment Structures Work

Most employer health plans organize prescription coverage into tiers, which determine both access and cost-sharing for employees.

• Tier 1 (Generics): Lowest-cost drugs, usually just a $10–$20 copay. They are widely accessible and often encouraged as first-line therapy.

• Tier 2 (Preferred Brands): Brand-name drugs that PBMs have negotiated discounts on. Employees typically pay $30–$50 copays or around 20% coinsurance.

• Tier 3 (Non-Preferred Brands): Higher-cost brand drugs not favored on the formulary. Employees may owe 40%+ coinsurance, leading to hundreds in out-of-pocket costs.

• Tier 4 (Specialty Drugs): High-cost therapies for serious conditions like cancer or hemophilia. These usually require coinsurance (20–30%), which can mean thousands of dollars per month. Although they make up less than 2% of prescriptions, specialty drugs drive nearly half of total drug spending.

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Copays vs. Coinsurance

• A copay is a fixed, predictable dollar amount per prescription.

• Coinsurance is a percentage of the total drug cost until the deductible or out-of-pocket maximum is reached. While it helps share costs, it creates unpredictability—especially for specialty drugs, where 25% coinsurance could mean $250 on a $1,000 medication or much more on therapies costing thousands each month.

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For employers, understanding how tiers and cost-sharing are structured is critical, since they directly affect both plan expenses and employee affordability.

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High-Cost Drugs and Their Outsized Impact

While high-cost drugs represent only a small fraction of total prescriptions, their impact on employer health plans is staggering. Specialty medications—such as those for cancer, hemophilia, and autoimmune disorders—account for less than 2% of prescriptions but drive close to 50% of all drug spending. Their costs have grown at double-digit rates year over year, fueled by new biologics, gene therapies, and infusion-based treatments that can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. According to Sun Life’s High-Cost Claims Report, in many catastrophic claim categories like hemophilia or leukemia, prescription drugs make up more than 90% of the total cost of care. For employers, this means a single claimant on a specialty drug can dramatically shift overall plan spend, making pharmacy benefits one of the most volatile and financially significant areas to manage.

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How Carriers Handle High-Cost Drugs

Carriers cover most FDA-approved specialty drugs but tightly manage access and cost. They use formularies to decide which drugs are included (and on what tier), require prior authorization or step therapy before approving treatment, and often restrict dispensing to their own specialty pharmacy networks. Coverage is generally limited to drugs deemed medically necessary, while experimental or non-formulary drugs are excluded unless appealed. For employees, this can mean higher coinsurance, delays in approval, and fewer choices on where prescriptions can be filled.

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Who Controls the PBM Market—and Who’s Challenging It

Today, most carriers are tied to the “Big Three” PBMs, which together control more than 75% of the market:

• Aetna/CVS → CVS Caremark

• Cigna → Express Scripts

• UnitedHealthcare → OptumRx

• Anthem/Blue Cross (varies by region) → Caremark or Express Scripts

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This consolidation means that for many employers, pharmacy benefits are automatically bundled with one of these large PBMs, leaving little room for visibility or flexibility.  

The remaining 25% is made up of disruptors offering more transparent models. Players like SmithRx (pass-through pricing with detailed reporting), MedOne (independent PBM with customizable formularies and full rebate pass-through), and Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs (a direct-to-consumer model selling drugs at cost plus a small margin) are challenging the status quo. For employers, knowing which PBM their carrier relies on—and whether a carve-out to one of these disruptors is possible—can be a critical step in controlling pharmacy costs.

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Legislation and Reform Efforts

In recent years, lawmakers have increasingly targeted the opaque practices of PBMs, introducing multiple federal bills like the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act (S. 127, 2023) and the PBM Transparency Act of 2025 (S. 526). These aim to ban spread pricing, require full rebate pass-through, and mandate detailed reporting—but none have passed into law yet. Similarly, a 2025 House bill dubbed the PBM Reform Act proposes greater transparency around Medicare Part D contracts and delinking PBM compensation from drug prices, but it remains pending in committee.

At the state level, all 50 states have enacted some degree of PBM regulation. Few states have gone further: for example, Iowa is considering a law imposing minimum pharmacy dispensing fees, and Arkansas passed legislation curbing PBMs’ ownership of pharmacies—though that law has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge

In short: there's plenty of activity at both federal and state levels—but no sweeping reforms have become law yet, leaving employers to manage PBM challenges proactively on their own.

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Be Educated: Key Questions to Ask Your Broker

1. Who is our PBM, and is it bundled with our carrier?

2. Do we receive 100% of rebates, or are they retained?

3. Can we carve out our PBM given our size and funding model?

4. Which high-cost drugs are driving our spend?

5. Do we get claim-level reporting from our PBM? (often not)

6. What specialty drug management strategies are in place?

7. How does our plan compare to industry peers?

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Closing Thoughts

Prescription drug costs are no longer a side issue—they’re a central driver of employer healthcare spend. The combination of high-cost specialty therapies and the opaque role PBMs play in setting formularies, controlling access, and managing rebates makes this one of the most complex and consequential areas of benefit management. For employers, the path forward starts with awareness: knowing which PBM you’re tied to, how rebates flow, which drugs are shaping your spend, and what levers you have to push for transparency or carve out alternatives.

While legislation at the federal and state levels may eventually bring more clarity and accountability to the PBM market, employers cannot afford to wait. By asking sharper questions, exploring disruptive PBM models, and partnering with brokers who understand this space, employers can take meaningful steps today to control costs and support employees more effectively.

Bottom line: Prescription drug costs are only going up. Employers that engage now—by digging into the details and holding PBMs and carriers accountable—will be best positioned to protect both their budgets and their people.

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Does Your 401(k) Plan Stack Up? Why Retirement Benefits Are the Quiet Power Player in Talent Strategy

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Key Takeaways

• Employers often overestimate the competitiveness of their 401(k) plans, while employees increasingly factor retirement benefits into job decisions.

• Match percentages alone don’t tell the whole story; vesting, plan design, admin fees, and investment performance all shape true plan value.

• Mployer has created the only solution that benchmarks retirement plans across 25,000+ designs, giving you a clear, data-backed rating.

• The top quartile of employers contribute nearly 2.3x more annually than the bottom quartile, and they outperform in participation and retention.

• With Insights+, employers can now evaluate their 401(k) offering with the same rigor as salary benchmarking, leading to a powerful edge in recruiting and retention.
  

The Strategic Blind Spot: Retirement Plan Competitiveness

Ask a benefits leader if their 401(k) plan is competitive and you’ll hear a confident “yes.” But ask based on what and the answers become fuzzier.

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Most employers assess retirement benefits by match rate or overall offering (“we have one, so we’re good”). But match percentage is just the tip of the iceberg. The truth is, retirement plan competitiveness is shaped by a complex set of variables, many of which fly under the radar for a lot of employees.

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From vesting schedules and administrative fees to plan flexibility and participation rates, the design of your 401(k) can quietly impact:

• Retention among mid- and late-tenure employees

• Offer acceptance among experienced candidates

• Total rewards perception and employee satisfaction

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And yet, few employers are equipped to quantify how their plan performs relative to the market.

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Until now.

Introducing Mployer Insights+: The First 401(k) Benchmarking Solution for Employers

Mployer’s Insights+ platform is the only system that allows you to benchmark your retirement benefits with meaningful accuracy and market alignment.

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Unlike outdated surveys or generic industry reports, Insights+ uses a 25,000+ plan dataset and proprietary scoring methodology to rate your retirement plan against your peers - by size, industry, and region.

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We analyze not just what you offer, but how it performs across four core categories:

• Employer Contributions

• Plan Design & Features

• Administrative Costs & Investment Returns

• Employee Participation & Utilization

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The result? A retirement plan competitiveness score that gives you the confidence and clarity to know exactly where you stand.

Why Match Rate Isn’t Enough

Let’s look at two hypothetical employers:

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Company A looks generous on paper, but if employees don’t stay long enough to vest, or the plan underperforms after fees, the realized value is far lower.

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Insights+ makes these trade-offs visible, quantifiable, and actionable.

What the Data Tells Us

According to the 2025 Mployer dataset:

• The average employer contribution is $1,286 per employee per year.

• But top-performing employers contribute over $2,900 annually, which is more than double the market median.

• 35% of plans still use vesting schedules that delay employee ownership of employer contributions.

• Administrative fees vary widely from 12.7 to 82.5 basis points, while 1-year returns range from 11% to 16%, depending on plan design.

• Only 21% of plans use auto-enrollment, despite its proven effect on participation rates.

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Participation rates reflect this disparity:

• Bottom quartile: 74%

• Top quartile: 94%

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Retirement Benefits = Recruiting + Retention Leverage

Retirement plans aren’t just a compliance checkbox - they’re a competitive differentiator. Mployer research shows:

• 23% of employees left a job in the last year for better benefits.

• 89% are more likely to apply to companies that clearly communicate benefits.

• Employees significantly undervalue their current benefits, incorrectly believing they are worth about $11,200 annually while the actual investment is closer to $23,200.

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That perception gap creates missed opportunities to recruit, engage, and retain the people you want most.

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What You Get With Mployer Insights+

Benchmarking your retirement plan is easier than you think.

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With Insights+, you’ll receive:

• A custom 401(k) Competitiveness Score

• A detailed breakdown of plan strengths and weaknesses

• Benchmarking across region, industry, and size

• Participation and contribution comparisons vs. peers

• A recognition kit for high-performing plans including badges and messaging templates to boost your employer brand

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Whether you’re evaluating your broker’s recommendation, planning open enrollment, or preparing for a comp review, this is the data advantage you’ve been missing.

See How Your 401(k) Stacks Up

‍In a labor market where top talent has options, strong retirement benefits can tip the scale in your favor - but only if you can prove it.

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Mployer Insights+ helps you:

• Quantify your retirement plan’s real value

• Compare against thousands of actual plans

• Make improvements with confidence

• Showcase your investment to candidates and employees alike

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Don’t settle for assumptions. Benchmark with precision.

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Ready to find out how your plan stacks up? Visit Mployer to get started.

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‍Editor's Note: This report is based on survey data from May 2025 that was published in June 2025. This is the most recent data available. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)

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The unemployment rate has been remarkably steady for the past year, fluctuating between 4.0% and 4.2% during that term, although there are some significant warning signs that the labor market has softened.

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Meanwhile, US employers added 139 thousand jobs, which is on par with the approximate 149 thousand net jobs added over the last 12 months on average, albeit down more than 20% from last month’s initially reported figure of 177 thousand.

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While the number of people who have been jobless for 5 weeks or less increased by 264 thousand to reach about 2.5 million, a comparable amount of people (216 thousand) dropped from the ranks of the long-term unemployed - which includes people looking for a job who have been without a job for 27 weeks or more. 

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What may be more telling regarding the evolving labor market conditions, however, is the decrease in both employment-population ratio (which dropped 0.3% down to 59.7%) and labor force participation rate (which fell by 0.2% down to 62.4%), both of which indicate that more people are leaving the workforce.

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Of the net 139 thousand jobs added last month, the healthcare industry saw the largest uptick, with 62 thousand net new jobs, followed by the leisure and hospitality industry which added 48 thousand net jobs - nearly 2.5x the monthly average of 20 thousand net jobs recorded over the last year.

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The social assistance industry also had a net positive increase in payroll figures, adding about 16 thousand jobs all of which were in the individual and family services subset, but most of the rest of the industries saw no meaningful change in employment numbers -  except temporary workers and federal government workers, the latter of which declined by 22 thousand as more of the DOGE workforce cuts began to appear in the data. In total, the federal workforce is down almost 60 thousand jobs in 2025.

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The manufacturing sector and retail employees saw relatively minor declines in employment figures, as well. 

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Despite the potential softening of the labor market, average hourly wages increased by an average of 15 cents last month, climbing to $36.24 per hour. Average hourly earnings are up almost 4% over the last 12 months.

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The average number of hours worked weekly across the US, however, held steady at 34.3 hours for the third month in a row.

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Mployer’s Take

The waiting game continues in the labor market, which showed decent gains but also indicated that people are losing confidence in their ability to find a new job in the event that they lose their old one.

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Beyond the reductions to the federal workforce, people working temporary jobs saw the next largest decrease, and although that reduction was not particularly significant, fewer temp workers perhaps indicates that employers are being more cautious with their payroll expenditures.

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Continued uncertainty surrounding tariffs and federal budgets may be contributing to caution among business leaders, but the 139 thousand net jobs is marginally better than the 130 thousand jobs that economists were forecasting, so perhaps those uncertainties are essentially baked into the workforce calculation equations for the time being at least. 

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In effect, the lack of clarity about economic conditions going forward is likely causing employers to be patient when it comes to both hiring new workers and letting existing workers go.

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Incidentally, this jobs report will likely lead the Federal Reserve to exercise patience and caution when it comes to lowering the interest rate, as well.

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In short, the latest data largely indicates ‘business as usual’ for the immediate future, but with the tariff extension pause for most affected countries scheduled to wrap up in just under a month and with additional uncertainties emerging on the domestic front with regard to immigration enforcement actions and the resulting public response, ‘business as usual’ may be (or may not be) relatively short-lived.

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Check out the Mployer blog here.