In 373 of the nation’s 387 metropolitan areas, the number of jobs on payrolls in August was essentially the same as a year earlier. Only nine metros posted a gain, and five posted a loss, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ metropolitan area release of Sept. 30. What stands out in the data is how little most of them moved.

BLS compared August 2026 with August 2025 and describes those 373 areas as “essentially unchanged.” That wording matters, because it does not mean jobs fell everywhere else. The release gives no count of jobs lost or gained in those places, only that the change was not big enough to be reported as a rise or a fall.

For someone asking whether their own area is adding jobs, the answer for 96 percent of metros is that BLS cannot say yes or no. The metro’s own row in the tables is the place to look, and the nine gainers are where the growth was strong enough to register.

The next metro jobs release, covering September, is scheduled for Oct. 28 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

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Where the jobs were added

The three biggest gains by number of jobs were Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, Texas, up 44,700; Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minnesota-Wisconsin, up 27,800; and Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, North Carolina-South Carolina, up 21,400. By percentage, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, led at 3.2 percent each, followed by Salt Lake City-Murray, Utah, at 2.5 percent.

Among the 56 metros with a population of at least 1 million, six added jobs, two lost them and 48 were essentially unchanged. Salt Lake City had the largest percentage gain in that group, followed by Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina, at 2.2 percent.

Where they were lost

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria had the biggest drop by count, 66,000 jobs, a decline of 2.0 percent. On the metro table, its nonfarm payrolls fell from 3,365,600 to 3,299,600. Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Oregon-Washington, lost 18,800, and Atlantic City-Hammonton, New Jersey, lost 5,800.

Measured by percentage, the worst of the five losers was Bloomington, Indiana, down 5.9 percent, followed by Flagstaff, Arizona, down 3.6 percent, and Atlantic City, down 3.1 percent. Atlantic City is the only metro on both the count list and the percentage list, because the other percentage leaders, Bloomington and Flagstaff, are smaller labor markets where fewer jobs make a bigger share.

BLS’s release does not give a reason for any of the losses or gains, and the figures cover all employers in each metro, not one industry.

Jobless rates told a different story

Payrolls were flat, but unemployment rates improved in more places than they worsened. In August, rates were lower than a year earlier in 234 of the 387 metros, higher in 126 and unchanged in 27. The national rate, not seasonally adjusted, was 4.3 percent, little changed from the year before.

The range was wide. Cleveland, Ohio, had the lowest metro rate at 1.8 percent, followed by Bismarck, North Dakota, at 2.0 percent. El Centro, California, had the highest at 21.9 percent, followed by Yuma, Arizona, at 19.0 percent. A total of 27 areas had rates below 3.0 percent, and six had rates of 8.0 percent or higher.

El Centro’s 21.9 percent, down from 22.0 percent a year earlier, left 16,676 people unemployed. Among the 56 metros with a population of 1 million or more, Fresno, California, had the highest rate, 7.8 percent. A flat payroll number and a falling jobless rate can sit together in the same metro, and the release does not say which factors drove the rate in any given place.

Finding one metro’s number

BLS publishes every metro’s figures in tables, not just the headline names. The nonfarm employment table lists each area’s jobs in August 2025 and August 2026, with the change and percent change, and the unemployment table lists labor force, unemployed people and the rate for the same months. Both are not seasonally adjusted, so they should be compared with the same month a year earlier rather than with July.

When the metro row shows a small change, the right reading is that BLS found no clear movement, not a decline. A metro that rose by a few hundred jobs and one that fell by a few hundred are both inside the “essentially unchanged” group. Anyone tracking local hiring should watch for a change large enough to leave that group.

The next release, with September data, is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. August figures are preliminary, so the metros named here can shift when BLS revises them.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.