February jobs report misses badly: US loses 92,000 jobs, unemployment rises to 4.4%
Mar 6, 2026
Key Points
- The U.S. shed 92,000 jobs in February against a forecast gain of 55,000, and downward revisions mean the economy has effectively been losing jobs since April 2025.
- Federal government workforce cuts under the Trump administration were a named drag, alongside a health care strike and weakness in information sector employment.
- Brent Crude surging 11.5% toward $90 a barrel was the bigger market mover, creating a real downstream cost risk for startups running large cloud infrastructure bills.
Summary
The February jobs report came in sharply worse than expected. The U.S. lost 92,000 jobs last month while economists had forecast a gain of 55,000. Unemployment rose to 4.4%, up from 4.3%. Prior months were revised down by a further 69,000 jobs, and factoring in those revisions, the economy has effectively been shedding jobs since April 2025.
The weakness was concentrated in health care, where a strike dragged down employment, and in information and federal government, the latter reflecting ongoing workforce reductions under the Trump administration. One softer signal was that the U6 underemployment measure actually fell, as the number of people working part-time who wanted full-time work declined.
Markets were largely unmoved by the jobs number itself. Stock futures slipped but did not collapse.
The bigger market story on the day was oil. Brent Crude surged 11.5%, approaching $90 a barrel, against the backdrop of the Iran conflict. The Nasdaq fell just 0.3% while the Dow dropped 1.6%, reflecting how much more exposed industrial companies are to energy costs than tech. Whether U.S. drillers expand capacity remains unclear. Earlier reporting suggested producers are reluctant to spin up new supply if they view the conflict as short-lived, but a sustained price rise changes that calculus. For startups running large cloud bills on AWS, GCP, or Azure, an oil-driven energy cost spike is a less obvious but real downstream pressure.