Although the U.S. economy added a startling 336,000 jobs last month, most of the gains were in just three sectors: government, health care, and leisure and hospitality, according to labor department figures. 

Professional services such as architecture, engineering, marketing, and management added a feeble 21,000 new spots.

In fall 2022, joblessness among college graduates was 1.8 percent; it now has risen to 2.1 percent, government data shows.

The tech sector remains in the doldrums after firing tens of thousands of workers over the past 16 months. While overall unemployment notched 3.8 percent in September, the percentage of tech workers out of a job was 4.3 percent.

“The IT job market and opportunities for IT professionals are poor at best,” Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco Associates, which monitors federal data, told The Wall Street Journal.

The job market overall also does not look as strong as the labor department reported, the WSJ noted.

The labor department calculates the number of jobs added by taking data from 122,000 public and private entities every month. In contrast, ADP tracks more than 25 million workers and said the economy added only a net 89,000 jobs last month, the fewest since January 2021.

Large companies, which house large numbers of white-collar workers, actually cut 83,000 jobs in September, negating all the jobs they added in August, ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said in a statement.

The sector comprising business and professional services was down by 32,000 spots, she said.

“These are the firms that hired very aggressively in 2021 and 2022 and they’ve been pulling back in hiring all year,” she added.

TRENDPOST: The greatest number of jobs added were in low-wage industries that dumped the most workers during the COVID War. Some portion of that number indicates those sectors returning to normal—not a bad thing in any way, but not an indicator of robust growth.

While 336,000 is a lot of jobs, the details inside that number do not reflect the kind of well-rounded labor market that supports a strong economy.