Short answer
163,152,000 people were employed in the US in September 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' household survey (seasonally adjusted), 504,000 fewer than a year earlier. Employer payrolls counted 159,044,000 nonfarm jobs (preliminary), up 496,000 over the year. The unemployment rate was 4.2%, and 61.8% of adults were in the labor force. BLS publishes October's figures on November 6, 2026.
- 163,152,000 people employed in September 2026 (household survey) and 159,044,000 nonfarm payroll jobs (preliminary).
- Unemployment was 4.2%, or 7.1 million people, in a labor force of 170.3 million.
- 134.4 million people usually work full time and 28.7 million part time; 9.0 million hold more than one job.
- Health care and social assistance has 23.96 million jobs, up 520,400 in a year, while federal government employment fell 232,000.
- California (18.15 million payroll jobs) and Texas (14.46 million) employ the most people.
On this page
- How many people are employed in the US
- Why the counts differ
- The labor force at a glance
- Full time, part time and self-employed
- Employment by age
- Jobs by industry
- Jobs by state
- Employment by year
- Employment by company size
- Which count to use
- Worked example: per-employee pricing in health care
- Sources
- Questions people ask
This page is for anyone who needs the current number of people working in the US, and for sellers, founders and analysts who size markets by headcount: HR, payroll and benefits software, workplace services, training, and anything priced per employee. It gives the latest official figures, explains why the counts differ, and breaks employment down by work schedule, age, industry, state, year and company size.
How many people are employed in the US
| Count | Number | Date | Source | What it counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employed people | 163,152,000 | September 2026 | BLS Current Population Survey (household survey) | People 16 and over who did any paid work, including the self-employed, farm and household workers, each counted once |
| Nonfarm payroll jobs | 159,044,000 (preliminary) | September 2026 | BLS Current Employment Statistics (payroll survey) | Jobs on business and government payrolls; a person with two jobs counts twice |
| Jobs covered by unemployment insurance | 155,732,363 | 2025 annual average | BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages | Jobs reported by employers to state unemployment insurance programs |
| Employees at private employer locations | 139,831,742 | 2023 | Census County Business Patterns | Private employees in the mid-March pay period, excluding government, farms and households |
| Employees at employer firms | 135,748,407 | 2022 | Census Statistics of US Businesses | The same private employees, grouped by company |
Both monthly figures are seasonally adjusted and come from the Employment Situation report for September 2026, released on October 2, 2026.
Why the counts differ
- People or jobs. The household survey counts people; the payroll survey counts jobs. The 8,986,000 people who hold more than one job appear once in the first and two or more times in the second.
- Who's included. The household survey includes the 9,522,000 unincorporated self-employed, farm workers and private household workers. Payroll counts leave them out.
- Survey or records. The household survey samples about 60,000 households a month, so its monthly changes are noisy. The payroll survey covers about 119,000 businesses and government agencies (about 622,000 worksites); each month's figure is revised twice, and once a year the series is benchmarked to full counts of payroll employment.
- Different years. QCEW is the most complete count of jobs but runs months behind, and the Census Bureau's business counts are a year or more older. Use the monthly figures for "now" and the annual ones for detail by industry and place.
The labor force at a glance
| Measure (seasonally adjusted) | September 2026 | September 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Civilian labor force | 170,262,000 | 171,261,000 |
| Employed | 163,152,000 | 163,656,000 |
| Unemployed | 7,109,000 | 7,605,000 |
| Unemployment rate | 4.2% | 4.4% |
| Labor force participation rate | 61.8% | 62.5% |
| Employment-population ratio | 59.2% | 59.7% |
Fewer people were working than a year earlier, but unemployment also fell, because the labor force shrank by about a million people. Payroll jobs rose by 496,000 over the same year, a reminder that the two surveys can point in different directions for months at a time.
Full time, part time and self-employed
| Group | Employed, September 2026 |
|---|---|
| Usually work full time | 134,376,000 |
| Usually work part time | 28,746,000 |
| Part time for economic reasons (slack work, or could only find part-time work) | 4,501,000 |
| Multiple jobholders | 8,986,000 |
| Self-employed, unincorporated | 9,522,000 |
| Wage and salary workers outside agriculture | 151,540,000 |
| of which government | 22,012,000 |
BLS counts self-employed people whose businesses are incorporated as wage and salary workers, so the self-employed figure covers owners of unincorporated businesses only.
Employment by age
| Age | Employed, September 2026 |
|---|---|
| 16 to 19 | 5,535,000 |
| 20 to 24 | 14,540,000 |
| 25 to 54 | 105,101,000 |
| 55 and over | 38,025,000 |
Jobs by industry
| Industry (payroll survey) | Jobs, September 2026 | Change over the year |
|---|---|---|
| Private education and health services | 28,005,000 | +516,000 |
| of which health care and social assistance | 23,958,600 | +520,400 |
| Government | 23,327,000 | -216,000 |
| Professional and business services | 22,482,000 | +123,000 |
| Leisure and hospitality | 16,969,000 | +62,000 |
| Retail trade | 15,479,900 | +26,500 |
| Manufacturing | 12,652,000 | +40,000 |
| Financial activities | 9,082,000 | -107,000 |
| Construction | 8,364,000 | +109,000 |
| Transportation and warehousing | 6,608,700 | -9,800 |
| Wholesale trade | 6,078,300 | +26,500 |
| Other services | 6,039,000 | +34,000 |
| Information | 2,739,000 | -120,000 |
| Utilities | 611,500 | +10,100 |
| Mining and logging | 607,000 | +2,000 |
| Total nonfarm | 159,044,000 | +496,000 |
Seasonally adjusted; September 2026 figures are preliminary.
Health care and social assistance added more jobs than the whole economy did over the year; without it, payrolls would have shrunk slightly. Government lost 216,000, almost all of it federal: federal employment fell from 2,914,000 to 2,682,000, while state (5,472,000) and local government (15,173,000) held roughly steady.
Jobs by state
| State | Nonfarm payroll jobs, September 2026 | Change over the year |
|---|---|---|
| California | 18,151,600 | +129,300 |
| Texas | 14,461,300 | +154,300 |
| Florida | 10,045,400 | +59,800 |
| New York | 9,970,400 | +18,700 |
| Pennsylvania | 6,212,600 | +45,000 |
| Illinois | 6,164,500 | +13,800 |
| Ohio | 5,688,300 | +18,700 |
| North Carolina | 5,128,000 | +67,000 |
| Georgia | 4,983,000 | -200 |
| Michigan | 4,487,400 | +2,000 |
| New Jersey | 4,377,400 | +3,600 |
| Virginia | 4,250,600 | -25,600 |
BLS state payroll estimates, seasonally adjusted, preliminary.
Of these states, Texas added the most jobs over the year, and Virginia lost the most (25,600).
Employment by year
| Year (annual average) | Employed people (household survey) | Nonfarm payroll jobs | Unemployment rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 157,538,000 | 150,905,000 | 3.7% |
| 2020 | 147,795,000 | 142,186,000 | 8.1% |
| 2021 | 152,581,000 | 146,285,000 | 5.3% |
| 2022 | 158,291,000 | 152,520,000 | 3.6% |
| 2023 | 161,037,000 | 155,868,000 | 3.6% |
| 2024 | 161,346,000 | 157,693,000 | 4.0% |
| 2025 | 163,493,000 | 158,457,000 | 4.3% |
Not seasonally adjusted annual averages.
Employment by company size
The Census Bureau's 2022 figures split the 135,748,407 private employees at employer firms by the size of the whole company:
| Company size | Employees | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Fewer than 20 employees | 21,950,184 | 16.2% |
| 20 to 99 | 21,976,701 | 16.2% |
| 100 to 499 | 18,323,671 | 13.5% |
| 500 or more | 73,497,851 | 54.1% |
Firms with 500 or more employees employ just over half of private workers, though they're only 0.3% of firms. For what counts as small, see small business size standards.
Which count to use
| If you need | Use |
|---|---|
| The headline "how many people work" | Household survey employment (163,152,000) |
| Jobs by industry, this month | Payroll survey (159,044,000) |
| Jobs and wages by county or detailed industry | QCEW (155,732,363 in 2025, average pay $78,720) |
| Employees by company size | Census Statistics of US Businesses |
| Employees at sites in a place | Census County Business Patterns |
For anything priced per employee, the market is the employees at the companies you can serve, not the national total. Start from the industry and company-size tables, then narrow by state.
Worked example: per-employee pricing in health care
Illustrative example. The company and its rates are invented; the counts are BLS (September 2026) and Census SUSB (2022) figures.
Rosterwise (rosterwise.example) sells shift scheduling software at $6 per employee per month to health care and social assistance employers.
- Find the growth. Health care and social assistance has 23,958,600 payroll jobs and added 520,400 in a year, more than any other industry.
- Pick the size band. Firms under 20 employees rarely need scheduling software, and the largest health systems build their own. In 2022, 95,515 health care and social assistance firms had 20 to 499 employees, employing 6,536,318 people.
- Do the arithmetic. If Rosterwise wins an illustrative 1% of those employees in three years, that's about 65,400 seats, or $4.7 million a year at $6 a month. At an average of 68 employees per firm, that's about 960 customers.
- Find the buyer. At these sizes the buyer is usually an operations director or practice administrator. Finding the right person at each of hundreds of employers is the slow part; Bebop finds the companies and contacts and researches each account.
Next step: turn employee counts into named companies with how many businesses are in the US and its size tables.
Sources
- The Employment Situation, September 2026, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2 October 2026
- Employment Situation table A-8: employed persons by class of worker and part-time status, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2 October 2026
- Employment Situation technical note, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2 October 2026
- Employment Situation table A-9: selected employment indicators, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2 October 2026
- BLS Public Data API: Current Population Survey, Current Employment Statistics and state payroll series, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed 30 October 2026
- Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2025 annual averages, United States, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed 30 October 2026
- County Business Patterns 2023, US file, US Census Bureau, 2025
- Statistics of US Businesses 2022: US and states, detailed employment sizes, US Census Bureau, 2025
- Nonemployer Statistics 2024, US file, US Census Bureau, September 2026
Written by the Bebop team at Blackpearl Group. Published .
Questions people ask
How many people are employed in the US?
163,152,000 in September 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' household survey, seasonally adjusted. That counts people 16 and over with any paid work, including the self-employed. The payroll survey counted 159,044,000 nonfarm jobs (preliminary), which counts jobs rather than people and leaves out the self-employed and farm workers. October 2026 figures are due on November 6, 2026.
How many people are in the US labor force?
170,262,000 in September 2026: 163,152,000 employed and 7,109,000 unemployed, according to BLS. The labor force participation rate was 61.8%, down from 62.5% a year earlier, and 59.2% of the civilian population 16 and over had a job. The unemployment rate was 4.2%, down from 4.4% in September 2025.
How many people work full time in the US?
134,376,000 people usually worked full time in September 2026, and 28,746,000 usually worked part time, according to BLS. Of those at work part time, 4,501,000 did so for economic reasons, such as slack business or because they could only find part-time work. Another 8,986,000 people held more than one job.
Which industry employs the most people in the US?
Health care and social assistance, with 23,958,600 payroll jobs in September 2026 (preliminary), up 520,400 in a year, more than the total net gain across all industries. Government is next with 23,327,000 jobs, mostly in local government (15,173,000), followed by professional and business services (22,482,000) and leisure and hospitality (16,969,000).
Which state has the most jobs?
California, with 18,151,600 nonfarm payroll jobs in September 2026 (seasonally adjusted, preliminary), followed by Texas (14,461,300), Florida (10,045,400) and New York (9,970,400). Among the twelve biggest states, Texas added the most jobs over the year, 154,300, against California's 129,300, while Virginia lost 25,600.
How many people are self-employed in the US?
9,522,000 people were unincorporated self-employed in September 2026, according to the BLS household survey: 8,830,000 outside agriculture and 692,000 in it. Owners of incorporated businesses are counted as wage and salary workers, so the total number of business owners is higher. The Census Bureau counted 31,985,874 businesses without employees in 2024, many of them side businesses.