1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

I am writing to express serious concern about the dramatic deterioration of the US job market in 2025 and urge immediate action to address what economists are calling a "no-hire" economy. The data is alarming. The US has added functionally zero jobs over the last five months of 2025, with unemployment rising to 4.5% in November, the highest since early 2021. For all of 2025, we added only 44,000 jobs per month on average, lower than any year during the 2010s and the worst since 2020. Broader underemployment measures show 10.8% of the labor force looking for more work, nearly the worst since the early pandemic. This slowdown is hitting young and low-income workers hardest. Teenage unemployment is up 2.9 percentage points over the last year, while unemployment for people in their early 20s rose 0.7 percentage points. Unemployment rates for new labor market entrants and reentrants are hovering near their highest levels since 2016. Meanwhile, wage growth for the lowest-paid workers has ground to a halt after historic gains in 2021-2022, creating the largest gap favoring high earners since the early 2010s. The job losses span critical sectors. Federal DOGE cuts eliminated 277,000 federal jobs, contributing to a government sector loss of 157,000 positions. Blue-collar jobs contracted by more than 145,000, with construction growth zeroing out and manufacturing and logistics each losing tens of thousands. The tech sector is down roughly 100,000 jobs since late 2023. Only healthcare continues adding jobs, driven by our aging population's medical needs. We are experiencing a jobless recovery comparable to the early 1990s or mid-2000s, where employment rates stagnate despite GDP growth. The nearly three-year period from February 2023 to present shows prime-age employment rates stuck between 80.4% and 80.9%, despite a more than 7% increase in GDP. I urge you to support policies that directly stimulate job creation, particularly for young workers and in sectors devastated by recent cuts. Without intervention, this jobless recovery risks hardening into outright labor market decline.