Unemployment Continues Increasing Across America

Inflation dominated the consumer economic news for 2025, but the slow, steady rise in unemployment in the United States was simmering on the back burner. From January to November (the latest data available), the national unemployment rate climbed from 4% to 4.6%.

The American Communities Project also saw steady increases across all 15 community types in 2025. And county-level data from September (the latest available), showed the trend continuing with some communities seeing sharper increases.

The increases are not massive, and historically speaking, unemployment is still relatively low. That’s one reason alarms haven’t sounded. But increases have come across the board, and another year of similar bumps or larger ones would likely be felt in economic confidence indicators. These numbers are already concerning, largely due to lingering concerns about inflation.

Unemployment in the Community Types

On this site, we often note the large differences in the communities the ACP observes. It’s hard to overstate how the lived experiences and the economic realities can be so fundamentally dissimilar. Consider the densely-populated Big Cities and the rural Aging Farmlands. So, when we see consistent trends across all our 15 community types, we take notice.

This latest unemployment data is an example of that consistency. We compared the unemployment rates in September 2025 and September 2024 in all the community types and found increases everywhere. (The comparison of the same month over a year is necessary because the data are not seasonally adjusted.)

Again, to be clear, these numbers are not huge. The September 2025 data ranged from 2.8% in the Aging Farmlands (where the rate is quite low) to 6.2% in the Hispanic Centers. But the fact that the numbers were higher in every community type in 2025, when there was not a recession underway, is noteworthy. It suggests a broad-based slowdown.

In addition, some of the different trends the ACP saw earlier in 2025 continue here.

The Urban Suburbs, places around major cities that tend to have higher incomes and more college degrees, saw a big jump in these year-over-year numbers. Their unemployment increase of .63 percentage points was the highest of any community type year-over-year. Usually, their higher socioeconomic standing insulates them from economic headwinds, but 2025 was an exception. The fact that the unemployment rate in the Urban Suburbs is almost even with the national rate is not common.

The increase in the Hispanic Centers, a jump of .59 points, may be tied to the nationwide immigration crackdown. Deportations along with fewer people shopping or on the street may mean drops in spending and hiring in those places.

If there is good news in these data, it may be in the African American South communities, where the unemployment rate ticked up by a slight .13 percentage points. Those communities often get hit hard when economic times get bumpy, but not in 2025.

We’ll see if those trends hold or even accelerate when we get the county-level unemployment data from November, which were delayed due to the government shutdown. The national figures showed an increase.

What’s the Forecast?

Simply put, these data don’t seem to follow a “normal” pattern and that makes 2026 harder to predict.

Why are the numbers in the Urban Suburbs climbing the way they are? Are the increases in tariffs to blame?

Considering the different economies in these places — some driven by agriculture, some by manufacturing, some by tech or trade or tourism — why is unemployment slowly climbing everywhere?

Could the expansion of artificial intelligence be to blame? There have been anecdotal accounts of businesses holding back on entry-level hiring due to the blossoming of AI.

These are questions in the ACP will explore this year with different dips into data analysis and on-the-ground reporting.

Despite all the uncertainties around what’s happening in these data, the numbers may offer an answer to the larger question: Why are people nervous about the economy, as survey after survey has shown?

Yes, inflation remains a persistent problem, and we will all likely hear a lot about affordability this year, but other indicators look OK. The stock market is up. The nation’s GDP is climbing. There are reasons to not be glum.

However, it may be that the unsettled nature in these jobs data is being felt across the country in different ways — not as an economic cataclysm, but as broad economic insecurity. That is to say, people don’t understand why things aren’t better. And that makes them worry about what’s ahead.