US Job Growth to Slow to 3.5% Through 2035, From 10.9%

The macro backdrop for the next decade just got clearer — and slower. BLS projects US employment growth of just 3.5% through 2035, roughly a third of the prior decade's 10.9% pace. For investors, the signal is in the sector dispersion: utilities, healthcare, and professional services are where the jobs — and capital — will concentrate.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' biennial employment projections, published in late August 2026, paint a labor market defined by sharp deceleration at the top and explosive growth in a few concentrated sectors. Total US employment is forecast to rise by 5.9 million jobs between 2025 and 2035, reaching 176.2 million — an expansion of just 3.5%, roughly a third of the 10.9% growth rate recorded during the prior decade. That headline slowdown is the macro story. But beneath it sits an even more important structural story: a single sector, healthcare and social assistance, will generate 2.2 million new jobs, or about 37% of all employment growth over the decade.

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Nurse practitioners are projected to see employment surge 41% by 2035, the steepest increase among highlighted occupations, while medical and health services managers jump 24%.

Healthcare's dominance is not a cyclical artifact; it is a demographic certainty. The BLS explicitly ties the sector's 9.5% projected growth rate — second-fastest in the economy — to the aging of the US population and the rising prevalence of chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. The occupation-level data sharpen the point. Nurse practitioners are projected to see employment surge 41% by 2035, the steepest increase among highlighted occupations, while medical and health services managers jump 24%. Those numbers signal not just more clinicians, but a structural shift toward advanced-practice, lower-cost care delivery models and a growing administrative layer to manage an increasingly complex, value-based reimbursement environment.

The fastest-growing sector, however, is not healthcare but utilities, projected to expand employment by 9.8% — roughly 58,800 jobs — as hyperscalers race to build data centers that demand immense amounts of electricity. Within utilities, the BLS expects nearly all job growth to come from electric power generation, transmission, and distribution, explicitly citing artificial intelligence power demand. The subsector detail is even more dramatic: solar electric power generation is projected to grow 153% and wind electric power generation 62%. This is a direct, measurable labor-market imprint of the AI buildout — not in the software roles everyone debates, but in the physical infrastructure that powers it.

That AI subplot has a second, counterintuitive dimension. Despite widespread fear that artificial intelligence will hollow out software and programming employment, the professional, scientific, and technical services industry is projected to be the third-fastest-growing sector at 8.6%, adding 926,700 jobs — the second-largest absolute contribution of any sector. Tech talent, in other words, remains in high demand even as AI reshapes how that work is performed.