The unemployment rate in the College Station-Bryan metro area dropped to 3.5% in September, according to preliminary figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, down from 4% in August and 4.3% in both June and July.
The September rate was also below the 3.7% the metro posted a year earlier.
BLS counted about 5,470 metro residents as unemployed in September, compared with roughly 6,600 in June, the summer peak. Over the same stretch the labor force grew from about 152,100 to 156,200 people, and the number of residents with jobs climbed from about 145,500 to 150,800.
Compared with September 2025, the area had about 200 more people in its labor force and roughly 560 more people working, the BLS data show.
The figures are not seasonally adjusted, so they rise and fall with the academic calendar. Dennis Jansen, director of the Private Enterprise Research Center at Texas A&M, told KBTX that local job counts tend to pick up when the university is back in session, which can produce swings from one month to the next.
He also told the station that employment has been growing a bit faster than the labor force, which he called "a little bit unusual."
Where the jobs are
Payroll jobs across the metro totaled about 147,000 in September, 1% more than a year before. Government, which includes the university, remained the largest sector at 51,100 jobs, up 2% from September 2025.
