FG Construction will display “Now Hiring!” Signed during the Mega Job News USA South Florida Job Fair held at Amerant Bank Arena on April 30, 2026 in Sunrise, Florida.
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A category that received little attention in Friday’s blockbuster jobs report challenges the consensus view on job losses caused by artificial intelligence.
At least for now, the data suggests the U.S. is gaining jobs, not losing them, as a result of the AI boom.
Another category suggests that strong employment data may have some staying power.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 165,000 jobs in October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. It was a surprising hiring surge that far exceeded Wall Street expectations. Economists polled by Dow Jones had predicted a growth of just 59,000 jobs in the same month.
Here are three surprising things you might have missed in this report.
consulting
The month saw a surge in consultant hiring, with the total number of consultant employees setting a new record.
The workforce of management, science and technology consultants increased by 17,300 people from September to October, the largest month-on-month increase in nearly two years. This category is part of the professional and business services sector tracked by BLS and accounted for 25% of the sector’s overall gains for the month.
Additionally, this workforce has grown by more than 45,000 people over the past year. This increase brings the total number of these workers to more than 1.9 million for the first time on record, according to BLS data.
Employment in the industry has been largely stagnant since 2023, after years of rapid expansion during the pandemic. Wall Street is wondering whether the rise of artificial intelligence will curb demand for such services.
These concerns are driving up consulting firm stock prices. gartner It will have lost more than half of its value over the past three years. Accenture and FTI Consulting It decreased by about 18% and 9% during this period. S&P500 It rose by about 74%.
Comparison of Gartner and S&P 500 over the past 5 years
Some economists are now speculating that the recent surge may have been caused by companies hiring consultants to help them implement AI. Gartner predicted in September that global AI spending will total $2.7 trillion in 2026, an increase of nearly 50% year over year.
“Technology consultants will remain employed as companies benefit from increased use and increased use of AI,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial.
Roach said October’s consulting sector was a “remarkable” bright spot. He noted that these jobs also experienced double-digit growth in the late 1990s as companies raced to implement new Internet technologies into their businesses.
So far, data suggests that AI could add more jobs to the labor market than it will eliminate through automation. A Moody’s Analytics assessment found that AI has created 786,000 net jobs since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, due in part to data center construction.
“Wasn’t AI supposed to destroy jobs? In the most dystopian scenario, it even led to mass unemployment,” Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi said in a social media post on Monday. “That risk hasn’t gone away yet, and productivity gains from AI could still shift into higher gear. But for now, AI is driving job growth, not reducing it.”
temp worker
Employment of temporary workers has also boosted growth, which could indicate a heating labor market.
Employment in the subsector rose by 18,600 people in October, one of the largest month-over-month increases since 2022. This category is also part of the Professional and Business Services sector and accounted for 27% of the sector’s increase for the month.
This total workforce size remains well below the all-time high set for 2022. However, the number of employees has increased by about 3% since December and is now at the level last seen in April 2025. This is the month when US companies are on high alert as President Donald Trump rolls out his plans for higher tariffs.
Economists view temporary employment as a leading indicator of the labor market. Conventional wisdom holds that companies that hire new employees on a short-term basis often transition those employees into full-time roles later on.
That may be what’s going on here, but the fact that we’re nearing the end of the year makes it hard to tell. This boost may be the result of increased hiring as the holiday season approaches, and if employers are filling positions for the holidays, they are less likely to retain those employees into January. Recruits like this don’t usually happen this early, but the season is getting earlier each year. BLS adjusts numbers to account for seasonal trends, but not immediately if trends are changing.
One hint that holiday employment may be changing lies in another category of workers: couriers and messengers. This is another field that serves as a barometer for holiday labor demand, with just over one in 10 new job openings in the same month falling into this category.
Jason Pride, head of investment strategy and research at asset manager Glenmede, said the category “should be watched for a reversal in the coming months.”
election expenditure
Political-related hiring in the final weeks of a costly election cycle may also have boosted salaries.
According to BLS analysis, employment in political organizations historically spikes in the lead-up to midterm and presidential elections. Data shows that staffing levels for the year tend to peak in October. Nonfarm payrolls expanded in the months before the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections.
But the sheer scale of campaign financing this cycle may have led to more jobs than in previous years.
The 2026 Congressional elections are set to go down in history as the most expensive midterm elections in history, according to an analysis by OpenSecret, a political finance watchdog group. Billions of dollars spent on campaigning could have been converted into paid jobs involving door-knocking, phone banking and other election-related work.
