The Merker Report, Q3 2025 Edition, Published September 10, 2025
Q3 2025: Market Analytics And Employment Trends
The third quarter 2025 edition gave leaders a full read on the national labor market heading into fall budget season, from economic indicators to occupational pay movement and industry growth.
Inside This Edition
- Domestic Market Overview
- Economic performance indicators that frame hiring plans for the rest of the year.
- Occupational Trends
- Job growth and wage growth by occupation.
- Industry Trends
- Job growth across every major U.S. industry group.
- Employment Conditions
- Each industry's share of employment and monthly job gains against the unemployment rate.
- Workforce And Education
- Unemployment by gender and age over fifteen years, and income by education level.
- National Performance Tracker
- Industry employment levels relative to prior years and geography.
The Market Moment
It followed a summer when economic data moved back to the center of every hiring conversation. Erin's commentary at the time: Anyone Who Has Been Paying Attention To Economic Data (August 2025). Pay transparency became the companion topic that fall in How HR Teams Can Navigate Pay Laws (October 2025).
How To Use It
Use this edition to pressure test fourth quarter hiring plans and next year's compensation budget. If a role has been open longer than expected, compare its occupational wage trend against the offer before rewriting the job description.
Charts in the full report draw on licensed labor market data, including LaborIQ and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics series, curated and annotated by Erin Merker.