What the recent eruption of jobs data means for CFOs

For regular folks, this was a week when you “work,” while trying not to feel bad that you somehow don’t have gifts for anyone yet.

For finance folks, though, this was a head-spinning week—think if the Super Bowl lasted a full seven days, involved significantly less chips and dip, and made you feel a little queasy about the state of the economy.

After stumbling through a confusing period without any consistent economic data, a clearer glimpse at the underlying health of the US economy opened up this week as that sweet, sweet data suddenly came rushing in like Vesuvius exploding its lava on poor, poor Pompeii.

The action kicked off with the jobs report, showing unemployment rising to 4.6% in November, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That marks the highest level of unemployment since 2021. The US added 64,000 jobs in November, a steep decline from September, the most recent month with complete data, when the US added 119,000 jobs.

“This is both the result of a slowdown in labor supply, due to demographics and immigration constraints, but also and perhaps more importantly, a slowdown in labor demand,” Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, told CFO Brew. “You’ve seen labor demand slow at a faster rate than labor supply, which is the main reason why we’ve seen this upward pressure on the unemployment rate.”

The BLS also released partial employment data for October, reporting a loss of 105,000 jobs that month, fueled by a drop-off in the federal workforce. “The decline owed largely to employees who accepted a deferred resignation offer by the federal government earlier this year,” ABC News clarified.

“The US economy is in a jobs recession,” Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in commentary on Tuesday, per CNN. “The nation has added a mere 100,000 in the past six months. The bulk of those jobs were in health care, an industry that is almost always hiring due to America’s aging population. Almost all other sectors are flatlining or laying workers off right now.”

Annual wage growth also dipped, falling to 3.5%, the lowest rate in over four years.

“This is a defining characteristic of the labor market that is gradually easing, where, essentially, employers are giving out lower wage increases and cutting entry wages,” Daco added. “That’s an important development where we’re seeing this slowdown in the labor market, which will feed into slower disposable income growth and eventually continue to constrain consumer spending ability.”

But for all the seemingly downbeat news, CFOs might want to allow for more flexible readings of the data.

“It’s not all black or all white,” Daco said. “We’re seeing a labor market that is softening, that is weakening, but by no means is this a recessionary environment,” clarifying that we’re in “a nuanced environment where business executives really have to understand the market, their own firms, and the outlook for 2026.”

To that end, he recommends CFO focus on two Rs in 2026: resilience and robustness.

Resilience meaning “flexible planning frameworks that allow for rapid recalibration, developing scenario-based strategies, and then having the ability to implement responsive pricing…to really adjust to a rapidly shifting environment,” Daco explained.

“The robustness element is more about the ability to withstand shocks…which is essentially having a strong supply network and diversified import sources, so that you don’t necessarily always face the brunt of rising costs, but also ensuring that you have a strong market position, you understand your customers, and you have a rather clean balance sheet,” he added.