The
Labor Market Insights report provides a monthly overview of key labor market statistics.
As the changing workforce and economic conditions continue to be top of mind for workers compensation executives, this valuable resource delivers timely perspectives on what the latest jobs reports mean for the industry. The
data and insights shared in this monthly publication are designed to provide just-in-time information to help industry leaders make informed decisions.
Key Insights:
The three-month average of employment growth through March stood at 68,000 jobs per month overall and 79,000 jobs per month in the private sector. This pace of growth is an improvement over what we saw in 2025 and may indicate that the labor market is starting to slowly recover from last year's weakness.
At the industry level, job growth was broader based than last year. Health care remained the leading industry, but the economy also saw strong job growth in construction, manufacturing, trade, and leisure and hospitality services.
Despite strong gains in employment, wage growth ticked down slightly. Recently, wages have been the dominant factor for payroll growth, the basis for workers compensation premium. There remains uncertainty around the sustainability of the strong wage trends we've seen for the past several years.
February's net employment decline stemmed from a sharp drop in hires with little change in the trend in separations. This, combined with the strong rebound in employment growth in March, suggests to us that February's weakness was likely a temporary phenomenon rather than the start of a new trend.
Big Picture: Employment
growth on a month-to-month basis has been volatile over the past year. Looking
at the trend over several months gives us a better sense of the state of the
labor market. Employment growth has accelerated some in early 2026. While
encouraging to see, it is too early to be confident in this new trend.
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Labor Market Insights report.
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Economics Team if you have questions or want to gain additional insights.
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