May 2025-May 2026 Metro Area Job Growth

[dimondpark]

This was released today, July 1, 2026

Largest US Metro Areas by
Change in Non-Farm Jobs, May 2025-May 2026
+48,600------New York-Newark-Jersey City
+24,700------Dallas-Ft Worth-Arlington
+24,500------Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas
+23,600------Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler
+21,300------Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands
+19,000------Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia
+18,300------Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford
+17,800------Salt Lake City-Murray
+17,600------San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara
+16,700------Raleigh-Cary
+14,900------Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos
+13,400------San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad
+9,100-------Fresno
+6,700-------San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont
+6,300-------Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom
+5,900-------Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington
+5,400-------Minneapolis-St Paul-Bloomington
+5,300-------Cincinnati
+4,800-------San Antonio-New Braunfels
+4,200-------Nashville-Murfreesboro-Frankin
+3,600-------Birmingham
+3,200-------Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford
+2,900-------Kansas City
+2,700-------Columbus
+2,100-------Honolulu
+1,900-------Cleveland
+1,000-------Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell
+800---------Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue
+100---------Tucson
-300---------Chicago-Naperville-Elgin
-500---------Tampa-St Petersburg-Clearwater
-700---------Memphis
-1,100-------Rochester
-1,400-------Buffalo-Cheektowaga
-1,400-------Tulsa
-2,000-------Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario
-2,300-------New Orleans-Metairie
-3,000-------Jacksonville
-3,900-------Oklahoma City
-3,900-------St Louis
-6,100-------Louisville
-6,400-------Richmond
-7,400-------Milwaukee-Waukesha
-8,000-------Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk
-9,100-------Miami-Ft Lauderdale-West Palm Beach
-9,300-------Providence-Warwick
-9,400-------Denver-Aurora-Centennial
-10,700------Baltimore-Columbia-Towson
-11,200------Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim
-12,600------Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood
-15,400------Detroit-Warren-Ann Arbor
-15,700------Boston-Cambridge-Newton
-35,000------Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro
-100,500-----Washington-Arlington-Alexandria

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.nr0.htm

Some notes:

The key word here imho is Stagnation. Most of these changes are marginal.

These are the only Metros where growth or loss
was 1% or greater--only 3 have growth that qualify as moderate growth(2%+) and 2 have moderate losses(-2%+)
+2.2%--Raleigh
+2.1%--Las Vegas
+2.1%--Salt Lake City
+1.5%--San Jose
+1.4%--Charlotte
+1.2%--Orlando
+1.1%--Austin
+1.0%--Phoenix
-1.1%--Indianapolis
-1.2%--Providence
-2.8%--Portland
-3.0%--Washington DC

Note to self: Take a closer look at Portland.

The gains are significantly off their peak,
for example, NY, Dallas and Houston were
each adding 100,000+ annually just
a few years ago.

DC continues to be affected by govt austerity

However, 3 Metro Areas, Las Vegas, Detroit and
Fresno, have unemployment rates that are over 5%,
this is significant because many economists
conclude that unemployment under 5% is
"full employment".

[Crawford]

Can't say people weren't warned.

It's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better, especially in manufacturing areas.

Vegas struggling bc intl. visitors have plummeted. Detroit struggling bc domestic auto industry is in bad shape. All areas down bc biggest job creators are immigrants.

[Notonfoodstamps]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Can't say people weren't warned.

It's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better, especially in manufacturing areas.

Vegas struggling bc intl. visitors have plummeted. Detroit struggling bc domestic auto industry is in bad shape. All areas down bc biggest job creators are immigrants.

We are gonna be in for rough 1-2 years.

[Velvet_Highground]

Indeed

[downtownpdx]

Didn’t realize Portland’s losses were that high, unemployment is a little above national rate but still just about 5.5%. Two of the area’s largest employers, Intel and Nike, have gone through significant layoffs recently. Although Intel stock has suddenly hit record highs as it appears to finally be getting in on the ai boom .. so perhaps that will translate into some job recovery.

[The North One]

Uh what is going on with DC? That's an insane gap from everybody else.

[LA21st]

Doge cuts still lingering. I saw it in person last August, and Fed Jobs reddit has a honest view of what really happened there,as those people were actually getting laid off.
Im not surprised at all.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by downtownpdx

Didn’t realize Portland’s losses were that high, unemployment is a little above national rate but still just about 5.5%. Two of the area’s largest employers, Intel and Nike, have gone through significant layoffs recently. Although Intel stock has suddenly hit record highs as it appears to finally be getting in on the ai boom .. so perhaps that will translate into some job recovery.

Portland was 5.5% in January, the rate for May 2026 is 4.7% according to BLS' report from today,
which is actually just a small 0.1% increase from May 2025(4.6%).

After doing a little digging, I found that over the past 12 months, every industry in Portland lost jobs except Education and Health(+0.5%)

Yet while the raw numbers might look like an issue and percent loss is not only marginal, it could be seasonal or an industry specific correction.

Anyhow, these are industries in Portland I looked at over the last 12 Months.

May 202-2026
Total Job
Loss-------Industry(Annual percent change)
-8,900----Professional and Business Services(-4.6%)
-5,600----Manufacturing(-4.8%)
-5,200----Construction(-6.6%)
-2,400-----Information(-9.1%)

[PoshSteve]

Thanks for the list. Cincinnati is on twice. I think one is supposed to be Columbus. Also glad to see Cleveland doing better than so many other places during a tough time all around.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by PoshSteve

Thanks for the list. Cincinnati is on twice. I think one is supposed to be Columbus. Also glad to see Cleveland doing better than so many other places during a tough time all around.

Yes! It's Columbus. Thanks for catching that.

[R1070]

Indy is not looking good given the size of it's metro population and amount of jobs lost.

[UrbanRevival]

Originally Posted by Notonfoodstamps

We are gonna be in for rough 1-2 years.

I'm afraid that's optimistic. I really don't think most Americans have any clue how much robust immigration was powering the US economy, because the tone of the immigration debate has become dramatically politicized and lacks any macroeconomic context. Pretty much every sizable metro area was depending on immigration for the lion's share of growth. Heck, even in smaller "Rust Belt" areas or rural manufacturing/agricultural towns across the US, immigration was literally the only hope for revitalization.

With anemic immigration numbers for the foreseeable future (and likely even negative international migration), we're likely looking at stagnation into the 2030s, if not national job contraction.

And we've barely scratched the surface of AI impacts on the job market.

[TempleGuy1000]

Originally Posted by downtownpdx

Didn’t realize Portland’s losses were that high, unemployment is a little above national rate but still just about 5.5%. Two of the area’s largest employers, Intel and Nike, have gone through significant layoffs recently. Although Intel stock has suddenly hit record highs as it appears to finally be getting in on the ai boom .. so perhaps that will translate into some job recovery.

I find the story of the Portland metro to be one of the most fascinating. In the 2010s, it really seemed like the city was unstoppable at the time. Really surprising it's one of the few places that is still below their 2020 pre-pandemic job totals.

Outside of Wall Street, the northeast is stalled.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by TempleGuy1000

I find the story of the Portland metro to be one of the most fascinating. In the 2010s, it really seemed like the city was unstoppable at the time. Really surprising it's one of the few places that is still below their 2020 pre-pandemic job totals.

Even back in the late 2000s and early 2010s the joke about Portland was that it is where young people went to retire.

[Crawford]

Portland never had the economic bones of Seattle or Bay Area. There are no top-tier universities, not particularly dynamic tech/startup footprint, and a lot the appeal was kind of transient, as the embodiment of West Coast Millennial hipsterism.

[DCReid]

I take the BLS numbers with a grain of salt. For example, I see no reason why Las Vegas would gain 24,500 jobs, in the top three, when tourism is down and no business/corporate news other than construction of the Guitar hotel and the A's stadium. Phoenix has been on the business news due to the chip factory boom, yet LV has somehow out gained Phoenix, which is twice as large. DC is understandable given the layoffs and downsizing implemented by the Trump administration. I have no idea about Portland, buy maybe perhaps a pullback of Intel and other tech companies that have been laying off staff by the thousands. And Fresno relatively large gain does not make sense, at least to me. And certainly, one year of change, based on one arbitrary month, does not signify a trend, other than that the job market has slowed nationally for all metros.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Even back in the late 2000s and early 2010s the joke about Portland was that it is where young people went to retire.

The 2010's Portland hype was insufferable. People acted like it was literally a utopia. Things like that always come to an end but I honestly didn't expect it to happen so abruptly and the perception to jump to the opposite end of the spectrum.

[Steely Dan]

I guess a place "where young people go to retire" isn't a recipe for economic success.






(BTW, im joking here. I love portland, and her myriad delicious beers)

[mhays]

With the chip and data center boom, I wonder how construction employment compares with permanent employment. With data centers the former is probably many times the latter. Chips might be more similar. Construction of the really big ones can employ several thousand per site at the peak in the local area (site and local suppliers/drivers/etc.).

In both cases they also come with multipliers. A few thousand construction+supplier people can easily mean a five-figure job total counting retail workers, teachers, etc. Then add more for their families.

I don't trust BLS numbers either. Even if they're honest and staffed appropriately, they still tend to do corrections over time, and seesaw probably above and below reality.

[downtownpdx]

Originally Posted by The North One

The 2010's Portland hype was insufferable. People acted like it was literally a utopia. Things like that always come to an end but I honestly didn't expect it to happen so abruptly and the perception to jump to the opposite end of the spectrum.

Yeah the Portlandia image wore thin pretty quickly. And the city went through a harder time than most during Covid, at least on the socioeconomic front. We fortunately had a low number of pandemic deaths compared to many metros.. but strict shutdowns, a long stretch of George Floyd protests/riots, homelessness increasing… hard to think of how things could have gone more sideways all at once to damage downtown.

That being said I’m sure the casual observer, if living under a rock for the last 6 years, would basically find a city today with a somewhat quiet downtown but otherwise livable and pleasant. A former resident who recently toured downtown after being gone for a year said it felt like the old Portland again. Anyway .. a bit off topic but I’m just saying I think the barrage of negative media attention has contributed to perceptions that in turn contributed the current sluggish economy.