This week’s top stories presented a stark contrast: record highs on Wall Street alongside high-profile layoff announcements. Meanwhile, the Fed is set to decide on interest rates without all the normal data at its disposal due to the ongoing government shutdown.

Hiring totals have been weak for U.S. companies, but terminations have largely been slow as well. This week, UPS said it cut 48,000 jobs in management and operations positions. While it had already signaled the move earlier in the year, the total was higher than previously announced.

Amazon is expected to remove 30,000 corporate jobs, many of which occurred this week. Target is slashing 1,800 corporate roles through a combination of layoffs and not filling open positions.

Despite the pessimistic news on the jobs front, the three major indexes on Wall Street all hit record highs this week. Investor optimism was fueled by a variety of factors, including new trade deals and recent corporate earnings.

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Based on a Wall Street Journal report, the number of unemployment claims filed by federal workers jumped significantly in early October. The federal government remained closed as of the publication of this report, but unemployment insurance claims are reported by state offices. 

In the week prior to the shutdown, only 588 federal government workers filed an initial unemployment claim. That number jumped to a total of more than 10,500 for the last two weeks combined. The increase in claims was driven by those that were temporarily furloughed, but it also included workers that took a deferred-resignation plan earlier in the year. 

While U.S. hiring has generally been weak, the lack of available labor is one of the main challenges. Workers on leave from government jobs could potentially look to other industries for roles that require a similar skill set. In its most recent report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported there were close to 6.5 million jobs open in the private sector. 

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The Wall Street Journal published the results from its quarterly survey of economists this week. Overall, the group projected the economy will continue to grow, unemployment will remain low, but job growth will be weak in the near term. 

Focusing on the last point, 57 economists submitted their U.S. job growth projections for the next 12 months. The average for the group was approximately 50,000 jobs created per month, or 600,000 total jobs for the next year. Other than during the pandemic, annual job gains have typically been at 2 million or higher since the end of 2011, but it has been below the level practically all this year. 

The unemployment rate, which was last reported at 4.3%, is projected to stay in the range of 4.2% to 4.5% the next couple of years. While that is generally good news, the amount of hiring will be limited due to the size of the labor force. 

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The ongoing government shutdown continues to dominate news cycles on a variety of fronts. One of its impacts last week was the lack of a national jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In its absence, many are turning to alternative measures to monitor the health of the job market. 

ADP reported that private-sector employment declined by 32,000 jobs in September. The company processes the most payrolls in the U.S., and it estimated the companies with fewer than 50 employees took the brunt of the job losses, losing 40,000 jobs while larger companies added to payrolls. From an industry standpoint, the leisure and hospitality sector lost 19,000 jobs. 

Other sources, from Indeed’s job listing platform to Wall Street analysts, tend to tell a similar story. The job market remains sluggish, if not fragile. On a positive note, layoffs are in a normal range, but an acceleration in the job market appears questionable in the near term.  

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With Q3 2025 wrapping up this week, the most notable performance stat for the quarter was the deceleration in rent growth. At the U.S. level, annual effective rent growth slowed from 1.2% at the beginning of the quarter to 0.6% in the last two weeks of September. 

Now, the focus turns to how fundamentals change in Q4, and how that impacts the outlook for 2026. 

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Annual effective rent growth slowed to 0.6% at the U.S. level in this week's report. After peaking at 1.2% in July, rent growth has gradually decelerated, suggesting demand has softened by some degree relative to this time last year.

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Multifamily operational performance remained in line with recent weeks. Annual effective rents were up 0.8%, but practically all of the gain occurred at the beginning of the year. 

Also in this week's report, key economic headlines related to inflation, mortgage rates, and layoffs.

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Budget bootcamps are underway, and this week's reports has the latest operational trends by market. Rent growth is ticking down, and occupancy will be starting 2026 at a lower rate in many markets. 

Also, in this week's summary we review the latest massive revisions to job growth that were released a week ahead of the Fed's major decision on interest rates. 

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A new forecast released last week shows three industries will outperform for job growth during the next decade. The tech, health care, and energy sectors are expected to grow at a faster pace than the national average. A slower pace of overall job growth will likely influence how much new supply is needed, and in which locations. 

As for the latest week’s operational results for multifamily, annual effective rent growth was 0.9% at the national level, and the occupancy rate was 93.5%. 

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Ahead of Friday's release of the national jobs report from the BLS, multiple articles this week have focused on AI's impact on the job market, including for recent college graduates. 

Listen to this week's report for a summary, as well as the latest multifamily results. 

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