U.s. Added 911k Fewer Jobs in Year Through March Than Reported Earlier
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The US added 911k fewer jobs than initially reported, sparking controversy and debate over the accuracy of government data and its implications for economic policy.
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(edit - see for instance Aug 2024: https://seekingalpha.com/news/4142722-why-was-there-such-a-b... )
It would be good for everyone if the BLS figures were trusted.
Even "not professional economists" might lose trust in figures which are regularly revised downwards ... months after being published.
Because these numbers are so important- to journalists, to the Fed, to financial markets, etc. they wanted a few million dollars extra, over a few year period, to run the new methodology and the old methodology side-by-side for a significant portion of a business cycle, to understand the differences before they switched, and to gain confidence in the system. Because an important part of this particular data set is what it signals to those others, it is important not to move quickly with this data set, but to give time for everyone to understand all the nuances. It's things like, how the market views the meaning of corrections would be different under a different system, and so they want time so that they themselves and all those other people whose jobs depend on understanding it to be fully aware.
Basically, they wanted to run a blue-green deployment strategy for their updates, but couldn't get the budget for it- and their budget has instead been cut so far. So they have prioritized continuing the system that everyone understands rather than experimenting with new things that no one understands. Because these are smart, well educated people who spend their entire lives thinking about these problems, and understand how the data is used, this is something they have thought about a lot and want to do the best job they can.
However, it's extremely common in forecasting to revise the forecast once actuals come in. In the case of the BLS, it's the documented approach for a very long time.
Every month the numbers are adjusted and annually. All of the notes as to why, the method, etc are in the actual reports*.
*I don't recommend reading them or the footnotes unless you have insomnia. :)
** Also, if the source data is inaccurate, corrupted, etc; if the models are non-transparently adjusted, that would be horrible and cause for alarm. At the moment, we don't know if that is the case. Yet.
Though honestly, I wish the terminology were changed to "forecasted" and "actual" to be clearer.
A few notes from an interview on the Odd Lots podcast, interviewing Bill Beach, former head of the BLS:
* Response rates among surveyed employees are roughly:
Month 1 68%
Month 2 83%
Month 3 93-94%
* Large employers tend to respond sooner, and are staffed to handle these requests better.
--------
April 2025 interview: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-of-americas-most-...
August 2025 interview (after BLS head statistician was fired): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bill-beach-on-how-trum...
Some notes and a transcript: https://www.crisesnotes.com/bloomberg-odd-lots-podcast-trans...
Different companies react differently as well. Companies that have a steady flow of cash (food is very inelastic - people eat about the same every day) realize they can give smaller raises, and this is a good time to invest in the company by building so they often hire. Companies that make luxury goods for the common man (think small boats - large yachts for the rich are different) tighten their belts because they are the first place people in fear cut spending.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont...
The monthly revisions are historically all over the place, up and down. My 2024 count says six months were revised up and six were revised down.
I think we created a new status for Uber/Deliveroo and other workers to put them out of the category three years ago and it fixed a lot of our employment data issues.
These are two separate metrics, they measure different things, and the figures often differ (unsurprisingly).
The BLS "establishment" survey (aka Current Employment Statistics, CES) surveys 120k+ businesses and government agencies, it measures jobs (not people), counting the number of payroll positions. This is "non-farm payroll employment", excluding the self-employed, farm workers, and private household workers.
The BLS "household" survey (aka Current Population Survey, CPS) surveys ~60k households, measuring individuals, whether they are employed, unemployed, or not in the labour force. These data are used to calculate the unemployment rate and labour force participation. This includes farm workers, the self-employed, and domestic workers.
You assume the data gatherers were at fault... <chuckle>
These data gatherers work for their government. How do you ensure they're happy to gather and publish data which is essentially critical of that very government?
We see large corrections in employment numbers when there's rapid changes in the job market that mess with the models, or when the changes are focused towards small companies. Right-wingers have somehow decided that all of this is instead due to the BLS somehow being out to get Trump, despite there being no significant changes to how the jobs report is made since the mid-90s.
You can have non-biased indicators that have error with mean 0.
Maybe a better question, when judging current operations, is how precise the biased estimates are becoming overtime. Is the size of the error increasing or decreasing.
Such simple statistics and data gathering should be simple for a federal organization.
Simple?! "Sweet summer child..."
On a more serious note, how would one ensure that a government department be sufficiently independent that it can publish data (implicitly) critical of its own political leaders without fear of retribution?
Answers on a postcard, please...
This was broken long before DOGE was a thing:
https://seekingalpha.com/news/4142722-why-was-there-such-a-b...
"There's still ongoing chatter about the huge revision to U.S. job growth seen yesterday and what it might signify for the economy and markets. 818,000 jobs were wiped out in the 12 months through March 2024 (or 68,000 per month), resulting in the biggest downward adjustment since the global financial crisis."
The BLS (USA) does adjust the numbers every month (for two months after the initial release) and annually. Regardless if the numbers go up or down, this is fairly common with statistics and forecasting in general. When actuals come in, the forecast is adjusted closer to reality.
Anecdotally: It gets lost in the mix of headlines when those adjustments show that the initial projections were on trend, or "close enough the talking heads don't care enough". However, it gets "interesting" when it's off-trend; or confirms prior notable good/bad news. In this case, it confirms* what was suspected, mostly confirms what was reported. As actuals came in, the reality was worse than projected.
*"Confirms" use case here: job growth is poop right now.
The data covers the period from March 2024 to March 2025 and trims the average monthly jobs gains seen during this period (roughly the last 10 months of Joe Biden's presidency and the first two months of Trump's) from a monthly average of 147,000 to about 71,000.
50% error. This is more or less consistent. How can a department have this error % and still have their job. I understand the data collection mechanism is not the most sophisticated, but even accounting for that, this consistent error % is not to be overlooked.
I wonder why there is such lack of accountability from firms whose data pretty much feeds the world's economy.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f941.pdf
My null hypothesis might be that the BLS works for the government, so how can they not be under (implicit) pressure to goal-seek their figures.
Once the figure has been published, and widely reported, it can be revised downwards months later, few will care. The system may be broken by design.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it"
Q: Why would one trust initial BLS jobs figures under this - or indeed any other - administration?
> This is dressing your conscious biases in sciensism
BLS figures being revised downward month after month after month is data, not bias.
Actual data would be measuring predictions vs accuracy over several decades.
The quarterly numbers come from better data sources (tax withholding, unemployment insurance payments, etc)
The worst case is that both the statistics orgs and the users are adjusting the numbers for a bias and overshooting.
This means there's a certain inertia: it can be better to handle the interim reports the same, even if they've been biased one way for several years, than to introduce a change that makes the numbers not comparable to history.
> 50% error.
It's not a 50% error; it's a 50% error in the magnitude of the change.
That's like saying that my room increased from 71.4 to 71.6 degrees, but my thermometer only saw an increase from 71.4 to 71.5; therefore, my thermostat has a 50% error.
This is a very interesting point. So if BLS suddenly became more accurate, all the agencies have to re-tune their own biases and corrections => Could lead to short term discrepancies.
What one sees as inefficiency is actually efficient from a totally different lens.
But you don't want to change what you're doing all the time, so you stay an easy product for everyone else to use.
(Interesting that this "overreport jobs in the preliminary numbers" bias has showed up; in older data using similar methodology it didn't exist, but now it seems to...)
Revisions and surprises are routine. Data comes in gradually, but estimates are useful even before all data has arrived. Early data is based on business reporting and businesses that report on-time aren't necessarily representative of all businesses. Those people who use this data know this, and prepare for revisions.
I hope this helps and you understand better. Anyone here who still thinks this is still incompetence or corruption because surveys come late?
>I wonder why there is such lack of accountability from firms whose data pretty much feeds the world's economy.
Create punishment system? Unless compaies report data back to BLS very fast, they pay big fee or are taxed higher. Small shops would hate it.
Or incentivize companies to report accurate data pretty fast. Payroll management systems can be plugged in real time, but that costs money and yeah small businesses are not going to be happy. So incentivization works better than punishment I think.
Calling this a 50% error rate is simply wrong. If an earlier report said a single job had been created and that was later revised to two jobs, that would be super humanly accurate and yet you would be calling for everyone to be fired over the 100% error rate.
I get it and yeah my tone is very exaggerated. I don't think anyone in BLS should be fired and whoever is suggesting that does not understand how public institutions work.
I am just curious why there is so much of a discrepancy. This has been pretty much the status quo in BLS for a long time. They issue numbers and then they revise them later. However, you'd expect the revision to be moderately within an error %age.
Also how will this retroactive change help everyone involved. Ok, the new job numbers reflect a gloomier past (or a more vibrant past) how is that even helping everyone who is so focused on 'what's going to happen tomorrow'.
I retract my stance about BLS being intentionally corrupt - that's uncalled for.
I advise you to do a little reading on how these reports are corrected. People relying on them understand how they work. People freaking out about them don't.
Over time they get better numbers relating to previous quarters and they revise their numbers.
Also employers can report revised numbers for a quarter, to make corrections.
A high-level is that 80% of the economy is very easy to track b/c it's not very volatile (teachers, for example).
What we have seen is a huge surge in unpredictability in the most volatile 20% of jobs (mining, manufacturing, retail, etc.). The BLS can't really change their methods to catch up with this change for classic backwards compatibility and tech debt reasons.
Part of the reason 'being a quant' is so hot right now is that we truly are in weird times where volatility is much higher than most people realize across sectors of the economy (i.e. AI is changing formerly rock-solid SWE employment trends, tariffs/electricity are quickly and randomly changing domestic manufacturing profitability, etc.). This means that if you can build systems that track data better than the old official systems, you can make some decent money investing against your knowledge.
I think this is a bad state of affairs, but I don't have a good solution. Any private company won't release their data b/c it's too valuable and I am reluctant to encourage the BLS to rip up their methods when backwards compatibility is a feature worth saving.
Manufacturing and mining are becoming much less correlated to the overall jobs market (likely, as you point out, b/c the government smooths the other sectors).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Mc3I
This is despite being a relatively flat % of employment since 2010 (after a long period of decline).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Mc4f
As mentioned, there is also the weirdness of SWE's going from 'better than the overall market' to 'worse than the overall market'.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Mcer
Retail employment is also dislocating.
Those are just the examples I can think of with no research, I'm sure there are others.
The lag is because it is based on employer submissions that are quarterly or annual.
Parsing tax or SS payments for what a "job" is would be a logistical nightmare, because that's not what the system is designed for (unlike the BLS's system, which is designed to count jobs).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PINCOME
It isn't until the employer files their quarterly Form 941 that you'd see employment numbers. Form 941 includes the number of employees and total wages and withholding.
It isn't until the annual W-2 filings that you would see a breakdown that includes number of employees and the individual pay.
Who has that data then? Treasury?
I came across this claim last week regarding recent US jobs figures:
> "All jobs gains were part time. Full-time jobs: -357K. Part-time jobs: +597K"
If this claim is true, and I have no means to tell if it is, then - regardless of one's view on whoever is in power right now - do we really expect any elected representatives to be brave enough to say that out loud at a press conference?
I don't :/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation
I sure hope not, because stagflation would be extremely unpleasant for everyone. Central banks like the Federal Reserve would be forced to raise interest rates, to put stress on businesses and consumers, so businesses find themselves unable to raise prices further and consumers find themselves unable to demand greater pay at work.
Raising rates to put stress on businesses and consumers is the only method known to work for ending self-reinforcing high inflation. It's what Paul Volcker did at the Federal Reserve in response to the stagflation that started in the early 1970's in the US and other countries, after OPEC raised oil prices. Volcker raised the federal funds rate in fits and starts to a high of 20% in 1981:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Volcker#Chairman_of_the_F...
It worked. Volcker's actions are widely credited with ending self-reinforcing high inflation. His actions also triggered a recession.
Stagflation itself triggered a stock market crash in 1973-1974. It took over 20 years, until 1993, for the US stock market to recover:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973%E2%80%931974_stock_market...
Like I said, it would be extremely unpleasant, for everyone. I hope we don't end up with stagflation.
Politicians of course tried to take control of the Fed. They also tried to fire him. At one point he needed Secret Service protection. Here's an article from the 1980's about it:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-04-05-fi-492-st...
I knew that, but my puny little brain somehow didn't catch it as I was writing my comment.
What's the mechanism? People are distracted by the amount of cotton production, which is the perfect time to falsify an earnings report?
I'm not saying publishing of statistics is what caused this shit to happen dingus. I'm saying focusing on it exclusively is dumb and it is wiser to look at a granular level. We can't look at this level because once you have a 150 node supply chain how trustworthy are the receipts?
What if your body had a metric as dumb as our high level economic metrics. We'd all be doing our best to get fat as fuck.
Worse is when fundamentals are [effectively] meaningless and everyone is a betting and hoping to pass it on to the greatest fool, even worse when that greater fool is the general public who are too with their own lives to fixate on the intractable nuances of the effects that Algerian hornet slayers are having on the price of tangerines which is buoying banana prices in Rwanada because legislation was passed last week in Kentucky.
Paradoxically, scale and complexity, but also psuedocomplexity (read:obscurantism) drive us towards these heuristics and effectively incentivise deeper cycles of Goodhart derangement. I expect this is a peculiar aspect of America's largess, though. The American cultural diaspora is actually pretty diverse from my experience.
This is what they did in Weimar Germany, Erdogan’s Turkey and Argentina. You’re describing massive deficit spending and inflation.
> If bids are won but they go and fuck all the money away send them to jail
Add in Ba’athist Iraq.
Also, guess what you do to fuck over your competitors in this system? You sabotage their supply chains. The politically connected wind up with all the tenders because they’re the only ones who can build.
> This is how stuff worked before people became obsessed with metrics
Literally never how it has worked in any functioning society. When you see this sort of strong arming, it describes a society in decline. The Late Roman Empire. The British in Suez. The French in Indochine. The Russians in Ukraine.
Is jailing fraudsters really the equivalent of some failed Iragi regime? I think you could make a better argument.
What do you think should be done about the state of the USA economy? Do you even see any problems that need addressing? I have a feeling venture capitalists see wildly different incentives from the laborers.
Media and GOP have talked about other items like immigration, taxes etc which impact the economy.
And if this is about metrics then GDP, budget deficits etc are also economic metrics talked about in the media.
https://fortune.com/article/buffett-how-inflation-swindles-t...
Does it get better?
Hint: What time period do you think he's talking about?
And why wouldn't the stock market be considered a valid investment in the presence of inflation? Where else are you supposed to park your cash if you want to outperform TIPS? Remember that in the 1970s there basically was no retail stock market compared to what we have now, where everyone and their dog has a 401(k) and trading is basically free.
Even if valid, his point doesn't seem relevant. It is going to be hard to apply any lessons from the 1970s to what we're facing now, when incompetent and erratic policymakers are driving the US economic picture rather than external influences like OPEC and Viet Nam. (And if we thought OPEC was a malevolent cartel, just wait'll the rest of the world starts forging its own trade agreements without inviting us to participate.)
The last time we had sudden unexpected high inflation was 2022 and stocks crashed did they not?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSA
I have no opinion on whether the article is relevant I was only responding to the sentence you quoted which didn't seem obviously incorrect.
Also, a 'crash' that recovers in 90 days isn't much of a 'crash', but the fact that people consider it a 'crash' is admittedly kind of scary.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_stock_market_decline
Perhaps you would have preferred if I said "bear market" rather than crash.
At any rate the first sentence of that Buffet article you hated didn't deserve your ire.
What exactly would one do with a 2 million dollar loan? Please don’t say real estate.
What a mess.
Thanks for the help.
/I haven't got a base pay increase in 4 years
Depends on the type of debt, of course. If it's a fixed term loan, and you'll definitely never need to refinance it, sure.
In some cities you get time-sharing beds. In 2003 I lived (for 3 weeks) in a house in London, I had my own room - the largest in the house. A smaller room had a couple with a baby, the loft had 3 mattresses in it but 4 people living there, time-sharing with the mattresses like you have in a nuclear submarine.
There's plenty of opportunity for landlords to increases costs even if peoples incomes can't support an increase.
If you’re aggressive, issue long-term, fixed rate debt and buy whatever you think everyone else will view as personally meaningful or currently-productive, provided someone didn’t beat you to it.
Arguably we’re 40 years into the “cash is trash” trade so everyone is in a little bit of suspense what happens next.
Deciding that stagflation is coming and changing you asset allocation based on a solicitation of opinions from random people is probably a bad idea.
If nothing else you should look for academic papers on ways to estimate expected inflation instead of asking for opinions here.
[EDIT] If you think we're in for a long period (decades) in which nobody will do what's needed to break out of stagflation and we're going to head the way of various inflationary South American economies over the past century, I guess look at Europe? IDK, it'll be bad everywhere if that happens.
My guess is that real estate will not do well in general. However there are always exceptions, but I don't know if the exception is in Dallas Texas (random big city), or Chaseley North Dakota (random place not even a town, cannot support even one store)
https://www.amazon.com/Investing-Amid-Low-Expected-Returns/d...
So the solution historically has been stable goods. Gold is the historic standard, but probably Bitcoin now as well. Possibly foreign stocks/currencies. But since everything is so interlinked now with pensions and 401ks that the financial world is far different place than the 70s. If you really want a safe bet, it's that there will be a fair bit of volatility and every asset class will have more risk with spikes up and down. All of this depends heavily on how the U.S. responds along the way.
[1] www.bogleheads.org/forum
In the case of inflation/stagflation it would be physical assets that increase in value under such circumstances. Gold/Silver meet this, as do many other assets. Under such environments counterparty-risk must be carefully evaluated.
All of your mentioned standard strategies have opaque and significant banking counter-party risk. There are also details such as the YTM loophole where the assets you hold may not have been marked to market (when interest rates go up).
This is particularly true of any bonds, or bond backed securities, and the leverage involved in many such markets is next to impossible to discern, and as a result the average advice of passive investment breaks down towards losses in the near term but not long-term.
None of this is financial advice, just reiterating things people should already know about. The stock market's synthetic share problem coupled with dark pools, and the commodity market's (COMEX) fail to delivers and failure to loadout (physical delivery), are things to know about. Unspecified risk from bad actors.
Its all paper with substantial counter-party risk until you hold it in your hands.
Anyway... gold is all about wealth preservation, not growth, so I don't know what to tell you. But it is up 44% over the last year.
Also, not enough people talk about housing prices in high interest rate environments. Mortgage payments are the thing that tether housing prices, and act as a lever. We see it today with just an extra 4% with low housing volume and people reluctant to sell, because then they’d need a new mortgage at the new rate. People who would like to downsize don’t since their mortgage payments often ends up similar.
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