Broadcast Employment Held Steady In December.

In years past, budgeting often led to downsizing in December. But that wasn’t the case for most broadcasters last month as the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports industry employment levels held nearly steady month-to-month. BLS says 334,000 people were working in broadcasting in December, down 100 from November.

Reflecting the continued ebb and flow of the business, the government says last month’s employment levels were also up 1% from a year earlier, or about 3,000 more people working across the broadcast sector, which includes not only radio, but also television, cable, and other content providers. BLS doesn’t release monthly radio-specific data.

In the other media-related sector, BLS data shows employment in publishing was more volatile in 2025. But similar to broadcasting, it ended the year on a fairly steady note. The government says publishing employment totaled 912,700 in December, down a half percentage point from November. Employment also shrank a half point from a year earlier.

Employment in advertising and public relations had been expected to show declines after Omnicom announced it will lay off about 4,000 employees following its acquisition of Interpublic Group. That is beginning to show up in BLS data. The government says 493,800 people were working in the advertising sector last month. That was a decline of 2.8% from a month earlier.

More broadly across the U.S. economy, the government data shows the job market cooled slightly last month. Overall employment growth continued, however, with 50,000 new positions added across all segments of the nonfarm payroll. Over the month, job gains in food services and drinking places, health care, and social assistance were partially offset by losses in retail and manufacturing employment. Federal government employment 277,000 between January and December, or a 9.2% drop in the number of people working in the sector.

The result was the unemployment rate, at 4.4%, was down 0.1% from a month earlier, with 7.5 Americans looking for work.

BLS also revised down monthly employment revisions for October by 68,000, and it lowered November growth numbers by 8,000. With these revisions, job growth numbers for October and November combined were 76,000 lower than previously reported.

Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 12 cents in December to $37.02. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased 3.8%. And the average workweek for all employees edged down to 34.2 hours.

Kory Kantenga, Head of Economics at LinkedIn, says the latest report delivered no surprises, landing broadly in line with consensus. “Payroll growth was enough to hold the line on unemployment, while labor force growth stalled and job gains outside healthcare remained weak,” he writes in a post. Even so, the December report offered the first clean update since the government shutdown sidelined BLS data collection.