You're being fooled by the top-level chart showing you absolute nubmers. It's just showing you which sectors are biggest, not which is growing the fastest. Click the "show table" to get relative values, which don't paint the same picture.

In fact government and healthcare grew above median, but not abnormally so. And at the same rate as other sectors like construction which don't really support the same kind of inferrence.

They weren't too far off. On a 12 month basis, Private Education and Healthcare Services, Leisure and Hospitality,Utilities, Construction, and Government sectors are the only five sectors of fourteen that are up over 1.5%, the only two white collar sectors of those being Private education/healthcare and government. Every other sector is below 1.6% growth. The Information sector is down 1.1 percent, professional and business services is essentially flat at a 0.9% increase, and financial services had only a 1.1% increase. Private education and healthcare grew at 4.2% over the last year, which is 323% of the median of 12 month sector growth of 1.3%. Government at 2.7% is 207% of the median.

Right, but if "2x median" reflects a range between 1.0 and 3.0% growth, is it really that insightful to call out specific sectors? There are always (mild) winners and losers in every distribution.

Note also that population growth in the US is something like 0.3% for the past few years, so calling 0.9% jobs growth "flat" seems a bit spun?

I mean, we both know what's going on here: there's a desire on the part of multiple posters to try to deny these numbers are good numbers, probably for political reasons. And I guess fingering "government" and "doctors" seems like an easy way to win that argument (i.e. "real people's jobs actually bad"). But that's just incorrect per the numbers. "Real people" are doing well too.

The big question for us to be able to figure anything out based on this: what did that chart look like in other years?

Healthcare and government are enormous slices of the economy. I'd expect them to be at or near the top of hiring much of the time. IDK about hospitality.