NCCI releases the April 2026 Labor Market Insights report

NCCI just published the Labor Market Insights - April 2026.

For your convenience, the content is provided below or view the full report with graphs here: Labor Market Insights - April 2026

1. Employment growth sharply rebounded in March from February’s disappointing levels.

The 3-month average of employment growth after March stood at 68,000 jobs per month overall and 79,000 jobs per month in the private sector. This average rate of growth is an improvement over what we saw in 2025 and may indicate that the labor market is starting to slowly recover from last year’s weakness.

At the industry level, job growth was broader based than last year. Health care remained the leading industry, but the economy also saw strong job growth in construction, manufacturing, trade, and leisure and hospitality services.

Despite strong gains in employment, wage growth ticked down slightly. Recently, wages have been the dominant factor for payroll growth, the basis for workers compensation premium. There remains uncertainty around the sustainability of the strong wage trends we’ve seen for the past several years.

2. February’s net employment decline stemmed from a sharp drop in hires with little change in the trend in separations. This, combined with the strong rebound in employment growth in March suggests to us that February’s weakness was likely a temporary phenomenon rather than the start of a new trend.

Big Picture: Employment growth on a month-to-month basis has been volatile over the past year. Looking at the trend over several months gives us a better sense of the state of the labor market. Employment growth has accelerated some in early 2026. While encouraging to see, it is too early to be confident in this new trend.

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