Q4 & Annual 2025 Labor Market Reports Are Live!

The WIN Q4 and Annual 2025 Labor Market Reports have a fresh new look, featuring the same trusted data with enhanced accessibility and usability. These reports provide essential insights into workforce trends across the City of Detroit and the 19-county WIN Region. New this year, each report includes a Labor Market Summary Dashboard for individual counties and the State of Michigan, offering a comprehensive snapshot of local workforce conditions. The dashboard presents a wealth of labor market information in an easy-to-read format, including real-time job posting data across eleven occupational groups and key indicators that highlight critical labor market trends and dynamics.

Annual & Q4 2025 key highlights include:

1. The WIN Region experienced broad labor market softening in Q4, with both labor force (-0.9%) and employment (-0.5%) declining from Q3 levels.
2. Despite quarterly contraction, the WIN Region labor force expanded modestly year-over-year, adding 10,207 individuals between 2024 and 2025—though employment did not keep pace. 
3. Unemployment trends in the WIN Region diverged between quarterly and annual measures, with the regional unemployment rate declining to 4.8% in Q4 but rising to 5.1% overall in 2025 due to lagging employment growth.
4. Detroit’s labor market reflected similar volatility, as the labor force declined slightly in Q4 while the unemployment rate edged down to 9.9%, continuing a longer-term recovery trend.
5. Job posting activity declined significantly across geographies, with the WIN Region losing 18,843 average postings (-7.4%) and Detroit losing 2,326 postings (-7.6%) compared to Q3 2025.
6. Health Care remains the leading source of employer demand, generating 51,333 postings in the WIN Region and leading all occupation groups in Detroit, driven by sustained demand for Registered Nurses.
7. Customer Service occupations continue to dominate WIN Region hiring volume, producing over 61,000 postings and reinforcing their role as a high-volume, entry-accessible employment pathway.
8. Statewide trends reinforce the breadth of demand across sectors, with Customer Service supporting over 1.1 million workers and Health Care generating more than 260,000 postings annually.
9. Educational demand remains bifurcated across the labor market, with 24.5% of WIN Region postings requiring a bachelor’s degree, while a nearly equal share (23.0%) are accessible with a high school diploma.
10. High-skill roles continue to drive degree demand in Detroit, where over 50% of postings require a bachelor’s or advanced degree—reflecting strong demand in Business, Finance, and IT occupations.