Nonfarm payrolls rose by 50,000 in December, while the unemployment rate edged down to 4.4%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. But the December gain did little to change the broader picture: employers added just 584,000 jobs in all of 2025, a sharp decline from 2 million jobs in 2024. It was the weakest year for job growth outside of a recession since the early 2000s, Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, told Fortune. 

“This really caps off a year of anemic job gains,” Long said shortly after the report came out. “It’s fair to call this a hiring recession or a jobless boom.”

Markets initially reacted positively to the report but later gave up gains. The S&P 500 was flat and Nasdaq inched up slightly lower. Bond yields were little changed, suggesting investors saw the report as weak but not weak enough to force the Federal Reserve into near-term rate cuts.

Yet under the hood of a relatively stable unemployment rate, the composition of the job growth remains starkly narrow. Nearly all of last year’s net job creation came from health care and social assistance, sectors that rely heavily on government funding. According to Long, roughly 85% of all jobs added in 2025 were created by April, with little momentum afterward. 

In fact, health care alone accounted for about 405,000 of those gains, while social assistance added roughly 308,000. Together, those two sectors contributed more than the entire net increase of 584,000 jobs overall last year, meaning the rest of the economy shed jobs on balance, Long said.

Elsewhere, hiring was flat or negative across much of the economy. Blue collar jobs were heavily hit: manufacturing failed to rebound, and construction posted only marginal gains and mining. Meanwhile, wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing lost jobs over the year. Federal government employment also declined sharply as the White House pushed to shrink the workforce.

“There was no manufacturing revival in 2025,” Long said. “Manufacturing was already weak, and the tariffs didn’t help. After that, you started to see other sectors getting worse too.”

White-collar hiring was no stronger. Professional and business services and the information sector both posted net job losses for the year, reflecting persistent layoffs in tech and corporate roles. 

“In many ways, 2025 was both a white-collar and a blue-collar jobs recession,” Long said.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, has remained relatively low—but that stability is increasingly misleading, economists say. The jobless rate has risen gradually from 4.0% in January to 4.4% in December, and there are now about 583,000 more unemployed people than a year ago.

In addition, long-term unemployment has climbed, and more workers are stuck in part-time jobs because they can’t find full-time work.

“It’s a slowly weakening job picture,” Long said. “Whatever metric you want to focus on, that story shows up.”

Recent revisions added to the sense of fragility. The Labor Department revised October payrolls down to a loss of 173,000 jobs and November down to a gain of 56,000, confirming that hiring late in the year was weaker than initially reported.

The “jobless boom” is also being sustained by an immigration crackdown that has lowered the labor supply. By reducing the pool of available workers, the administration has effectively reduced the breakeven bar for the labor market; because there are fewer people looking for work, the unemployment rate remains low even as the private-sector engine hits stall speed.

Analysts at Jefferies were cautious to interpret the weak December payroll figure on its own, pointing to firmer signals in the household survey, which they described as “very encouraging.” They noted that employment rose by 232,000 in December while the number of unemployed fell by 279,000.

“The decline in the unemployment rate came from more of the right reasons than we anticipated,” Jefferies economist Thomas Simons wrote, adding that broader underemployment also improved.

Simons also emphasized that December jobs data are among the noisiest of the year and should not be over-interpreted.

 “There is an enormous amount of seasonal noise this month, and even more in January,” he said, noting that upcoming annual benchmark revisions could “re-contextualize the path of job growth over the course of last year.” 

That backdrop helps explain the Fed’s policy direction. Despite inflation remaining above target, the central bank has prioritized supporting the labor market. Wage growth remains relatively strong—average hourly earnings rose 3.8% over the past year—but Long said that strength is unlikely to persist.

“That was the number that surprised me,” she said. “Wage gains are still pretty strong, but I expect them to cool. Workers can feel they’ve lost bargaining power. It’s not just job seekers—people who still have jobs are frustrated too.”

Looking ahead, Long expects the Fed to pause in January, with a possible rate cut in March if hiring continues to lag. “This jobless boom is very uneasy on Main Street,” she said. “There’s justification for more cuts if this continues.”

A US federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Grammy-winning rap duo Salt-N-Pepa against Universal Music Group, ruling that the artists never owned the copyrights to their sound recordings and therefore cannot reclaim them.

Judge Denise Cote of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an opinion and order on Thursday (January 8) granting UMG’s motion to dismiss both claims in the case, which you can read in full here.

Cheryl James and Sandra Denton, professionally known as Salt-N-Pepa, filed the lawsuit in May 2025 seeking to regain their copyrights and physical master recordings. You can read the complaint in full here.

The duo attempted to exercise their termination rights under Section 203 of the Copyright Act, which allows artists to reclaim copyright ownership 35 years after an initial transfer.

Salt-N-Pepa served their Notice of Termination on UMG in March 2022, with the earliest termination date listed as May 15, 2024.

However, Judge Cote ruled that the 1986 agreements on which Salt-N-Pepa based their claim “do not indicate that Plaintiffs ever owned the copyrights to the sound recordings or that they granted a transfer of those rights to anyone else.”

In other words, because Salt-N-Pepa never owned the copyrights in the first place, they cannot use Section 203 of the Copyright Act to reclaim them. The termination provision only applies to artists who previously owned and then transferred their copyrights.

The judge’s decision centered on three agreements executed on May 15, 1986. Salt-N-Pepa signed a recording agreement with Noise In The Attic Productions, Inc. (NITA), a company owned by their producer Hurby Azor. That same day, Azor entered into a distribution agreement with Next Plateau Records, and Salt-N-Pepa signed an inducement letter addressed to Next Plateau Records.

The 1986 NITA Recording Agreement stated that NITA “shall be the sole and exclusive owner of any and all rights, title and/or interest in and to master recordings recorded hereunder, including but not limited to the worldwide sound copyrights therein.”

The 1986 agreement between Azor and Next Plateau Records then transferred those rights, stating that Azor “hereby sells, transfers and assigns to Company [Next Plateau Records]… all aforesaid right, title and interest in and to such Sides including without limitation the sound recording copyright.”

Judge Cote wrote: “It was only Azor and NITA that granted a transfer of rights in 1986 to Next Plateau Records.”

Salt-N-Pepa had argued that their inducement letter constituted a direct grant of their rights to Next Plateau Records.

However, Judge Cote rejected this interpretation, noting that in the letter, Salt-N-Pepa agreed to the representations in the distribution agreement, which included NITA’s representation that it was “the sole and exclusive owner” of the copyrights.

“The statutory text in § 203 is clear: Plaintiffs can only terminate copyright transfers that they executed,” Judge Cote wrote. “They cannot terminate a copyright grant executed by NITA.”

The judge also dismissed Salt-N-Pepa’s conversion claim, which alleged that UMG “intentionally and substantially interfered with Plaintiffs’ possession of their Master Tapes.”

Judge Cote ruled that Salt-N-Pepa failed to plausibly allege their ownership of the Master Tapes.

Thursday’s memorandum noted that UMG is the “successor-in-interest” to both Next Plateau Records and London Records. On May 15, 2024, UMG removed dozens of Salt-N-Pepa’s sound recordings from streaming platforms.

“Even with the court’s complete rejection of their claims, we remain open and willing to find a resolution to the matter and turn the page so we can focus our efforts on working together to amplify Salt-N-Pepa’s legacy for generations to come.”

UMG spokesperson

A Universal Music Group spokesperson told MBW: “While we are gratified that the court dismissed this baseless lawsuit, it should never have been brought in the first place. Prior to this suit—and without any legal obligation to do so—we made multiple attempts to resolve the matter amicably, improve the artists’ compensation, and ensure that Salt-N-Pepa’s fans had access to their music.

“Even with the court’s complete rejection of their claims, we remain open and willing to find a resolution to the matter and turn the page so we can focus our efforts on working together to amplify Salt-N-Pepa’s legacy for generations to come.”

Music Business Worldwide

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