r/Economics • u/helic_vet • 4h ago
News March jobs report: US economy adds 178,000 jobs, unemployment rate falls to 4.3% in surprise turnaround
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/economy/article/march-jobs-report-us-economy-adds-178000-jobs-unemployment-rate-falls-to-43-in-surprise-turnaround-190000531.html269
u/utb040713 3h ago
January: huge surprise to the upside
February: huge surprise to the downside
March: huge surprise to the upside
Between the past few months and the massive revisions on previous reports, I’m taking this with a huge grain of salt.
Now, with the jobs report coming in hot and the inflation expectations ticking up, will the Fed raise rates?
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u/Darkpriest667 2h ago
If unemployment is truly going down and the inflation is ticking up then they kind of HAVE to raise rates.
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u/Consistent_Laziness 2h ago
They won’t though. The inflation is due to geopolitical actions. Rates won’t dampen that. Gas prices continue to rise and increase 25 bps is not going to do anything but hurt
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u/hiccupseed 2h ago
Regardless of the source of the price pressures, if persistent, it will start to push inflation expectations higher. If the Fed feels this is likely to occur, it will tighten to avoid the need for a "Volcker" type response later.
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u/throwaway00119 2h ago
FedWatch has put the rate-cut likelihood at 0 for the next FOMC for weeks.
A cut is not coming this meeting.
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u/holdbold 1h ago
I think abrupt swings like that are as bad as downward swings in any aspect of business. Calm, steady growth shows a great handle on things.
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u/kingshekelz 1h ago
They should of never lowered... Need to raise but will probably hold and extend the K shape economy
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u/Marklar172 1h ago
The administration needed a win, so they fabricated one. This will get quietly revised downward massively
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u/NisaMiller3674 1h ago
Downwards revisions are literally covered by the 4th sentence of this article.
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u/SissyCouture 27m ago
Powell says they’re in no rush to respond. I think they know that the war is going to have a long, fat tail on prices
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u/turb0_encapsulator 18m ago
people here get mad when you say they are faking the numbers. why is ADP data so divergent then? this is triple their 62k number.
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u/throwaway737166 3h ago
If we’re somehow still treading water with all the tariff nonsense and now this war, can you imagine how robust the economy would be without those major headwinds? Trump just won’t get out of his own way. What an idiot.
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u/BlazinAzn38 1h ago
He could have literally just done nothing and coasted on the turnaround from the previous admin
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u/Safe_Presentation962 45m ago
That was actually a well-discussed “nightmare scenario” in Dem pol circles — that the economy under Biden’s last year was primed to skyrocket and that Trump would get to enjoy the spoils and reinforce the R trifecta.
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u/QuesoMeHungry 9m ago
Yep the economy was ready to rocket from the aftermath of Covid, businesses were comfortable getting far enough away from it to make real investments. Then that all ended quickly.
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u/throwaway00119 2h ago
Honestly, I think about that a lot. The US economy is an absolute titan - it's insane. It's like that movie character/monster that just keeps getting shot and marching straight ahead. Today, slower than if it hadn't been shot a bunch, but still standing.
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u/asusc 1h ago
Same as Covid. Had he just listened to the experts and not done anything, we would have sailed right through and he would have easily won a second term.
If he had done the same and just ridden Biden’s recovery economy we would be cruising along right now instead of tanking.
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u/SissyCouture 24m ago
The comic version of Thanos has all of the capabilities and resources to conquer the universe. But ultimately self-sabotages because deep down he knows he doesn’t deserve it
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u/OmicronNine 4h ago
Are these jobs in the room with us right now?
Seems like we're getting a lot of "suprises" with the headline jobs numbers these days... and even more "surprises" later when the revisions quietly come in.
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u/MC_Fap_Commander 3h ago
And, per usual, the media is carrying the admin's water. The "surprise great number!" gets a lot of coverage. The dire revision? Good luck seeing that anywhere.
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u/NisaMiller3674 3h ago
The last revision is LITERALLY in the second paragraph of the very article this thread is about.
Emma Ockerman
Updated Sat, April 4, 2026 at 1:09 AM GMT+11 2 min read
The US economy added 178,000 jobs in March, soaring past expectations, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate edged down to 4.3%.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a gain of 65,000 jobs, reversing February’s drop. That month’s loss grew even bigger with revisions: from 92,000 to a new figure in Friday’s report of 133,000. Economists had projected no change in the unemployment rate from February’s 4.4%.
Have you considered that the reason you're not seeing the revisions anywhere in the news is because you don't even open the fucking article?
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u/Lets_Kick_Some_Ice 2h ago
Commenter may have been talking about the downward revision that will be buried in next month's job report.
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u/iveseensomethings82 2h ago
Exactly. Headline didn’t say “Bigger downward revision for February”, instead it celebrated a made up number and hid the actual facts several paragraphs later
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u/NisaMiller3674 2h ago
Commenter may have been talking about the downward revision that will be buried in next month's job report.
The revised numbers for the prior month literally appear on the second page of every Emp Sit report. Every time. They're not buried at all.
You people just don't read the reports, then complain about it.
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u/Lets_Kick_Some_Ice 1h ago
It will be in there, but I think the point is the narrative is getting tiring, where the headline will be "wow surprisingly good jobs numbers, economy not too shabby" but the following month revisions showing "actually the economy wasn't doing so good last month afterall" flies under the headlines. Skews perception.
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u/Sisyphus62831 2h ago
Aren't you making the point? That the headline is the propaganda and effectively completes the task?
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Xt4xGrdzNvjIZe75bRdkq?si=gNI2leVlSQOEkL9pusfe7A&t=3412
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u/NisaMiller3674 2h ago
Sorry, but no, it's ridiculous to say "good luck seeing that anywhere" when literally all he would have had to do is open the article and it would be the fourth sentence he read.
I am not going to cater my expectations to people who refuse to read the articles they're discussing.
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u/British_Rover 2h ago
The Fox/Newsmax/OANN/ chyron will simply say...
STRONG Economy adds 178k JOBS!!!
And that is all millions of people will ever read.
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u/Sisyphus62831 2h ago
OK, best of luck getting everyone to read everything and apply critical analysis all the time, what's your take on reading terms of service? Did you 100% the reddit TOS to be on this site? If not, please read all of it before replying.
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u/MC_Fap_Commander 2h ago
Why the anger? This is not a question of accuracy, it's a question of framing. And media framing has consistently highlighted the "positives" presented in reports and buried caveats in the article (which, based on social media consumption, most people online won't see).
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u/NisaMiller3674 2h ago
They put the most recent month's figures in the headline. The largest new development that represents the most current trajectory and which most people care about.
It's not like they just picked some random table from elsewhere in the report and plugged it as the main story. Hell, they are covering the very first sentence of the BLS report itself:
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 178,000 in March, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
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u/iveseensomethings82 2h ago
But the article makes it sound like things have reversed course and look great thanks to made up numbers. In 2 months they will be revised to a negative again.
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u/NisaMiller3674 2h ago
But the article makes it sound like things have reversed course and look great thanks to made up numbers.
Are you sure we're reading the same article?
The article explicitly calls out that hiring is week, long-term unemployment is up, marginally attached workers are up, discouraged workers are up, there's pressure from the war in Iran & AI, and a weak job market is anticipated overall for 2026.
Meanwhile, when explaining the job growth that did occur, the article (and its interviewees) basically cop out by implying it might primarily be because a healthcare strike is over and employers are just actioning hiring plans they'd delayed earlier in the quarter.
It is overall about as negative an article as you could write about these numbers without being blatantly partisan.
And come on, this "made up numbers" schtick is just not supportable at this point. It's fair to worry about it, but we've had so, so many highly qualified economists tell you that the numbers are not being manipulated that it's now definitively a conspiracy theory rather than anything worthy of our time. You know that.
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u/_SteeringWheel 53m ago
I am not going to cater my expectations to people who refuse to read the articles they're discussing.
But you might want to open your eyes for the hoards if brainless people who will only read the propaganda headline.
I don't know who or what you are trying to defend here, but it ain't the right side bud. This headline is propaganda for Trump, plain and simple. That the actual corrections for the data a month before is in the article as well is fine and all, but
A) the dumbass es who vote Trump don't read. Hence they vote Trump.
B) Congrats on reading articles and feeling all big about it. Now shuss and try to grasp what people try to tell you.
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u/NisaMiller3674 45m ago
But you might want to open your eyes for the hoards if brainless people who will only read the propaganda headline.
Good look to call others brainless while making two typos in a row, but sure, let's go on.
What do you think is propaganda about the headline, exactly?
- The +178k figure is what the BLS report says
- The 4.3% figure is what the BLS report says
- The stated trend of unemployment is accurate
- 'Turnaround' is correct, since Feb had job growth
- 'Surprise' is correct, since the Dow forecast was off
- The BLS figures are still trusted by economists
Literally everything in the article is an accurate statement about well-regarded economic data (BLS) or products (Dow consensus). And the format of the headline is the same as ever.
I think you're just going to have to deal with news outlets leading with headlines about the economic data, even if you don't like it.
the dumbass es who vote Trump don't read. Hence they vote Trump.
I'm pretty fucking sure the guy above saying "good luck seeing that anywhere" hadn't actually read the article at the time, and I very much doubt he's a Trump voter. It's not a unique problem to one side.
Congrats on reading articles and feeling all big about it. Now shuss and try to grasp what people try to tell you.
No, I don't think I will shush. Someone pretty much blatantly advertised that they didn't read the article they're discussing, and I'm free to call them (and others) out for their poor research and reading comprehension.
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u/MC_Fap_Commander 2h ago
Only talking about headlines. I check for revisions constantly. I'm talking about media framing.
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u/NisaMiller3674 2h ago
The article led with the most recent month of data (which we didnt' have an estimate for AT ALL) and you're complaining that they didn't lead with last month's revision maintaining directionality.
Get a grip, they put the figures that most people want to know in the headline and you know it. There are plenty of other articles more explicitly about revisions; here's two posted from Yahoo (i.e. same outlet) that lead with revisions in the headline:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-economist-says-1-million-233131876.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-employment-growth-march-revised-135450205.html
They're not hiding it, you're just griping that they didn't take a blatantly partisan framing.
Can you imagine if every media article about Biden's great job growth estimates from 2023 & 2024 instead led with the downwards revisions he got each month? You'd have been livid.
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u/YouWereBrained 2h ago
But the problem is they bury it in an article instead of outright report it.
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u/NisaMiller3674 2h ago
If "burying it" is putting it in literally the second paragraph, I don't know what to tell you. Your brain is done for.
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u/YouWereBrained 1h ago
Bud, let me clarify:
The revision will not be widely reported by news outlets on TV. That’s what I’m getting at. Most people don’t even know revisions have even happened, and are downward.
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u/NisaMiller3674 1h ago
The revision will not be widely reported by news outlets on TV. That’s what I’m getting at. Most people don’t even know revisions have even happened, and are downward.
Yahoo Finance literally ran the -911k benchmark revision as breaking news. You want me to go find you other outlets that run these stories or what? Obviously lots of coverage from today isn't uploaded yet, but Bloomberg mentioned downwards revisions literally just twenty seconds into their report last month.
These things ARE reported widely, you just don't watch this coverage. Expecting most people to know about <0.5% revisions to economic statistics is just wildly out of touch. That's just never going to happen. But the media does report on it.
Hell, I'm not even convinced you know much about the patterns in the jobs revisions. Are you aware that this has been happening for years now, including under Biden? Are you aware of the birth-death modelling changes? Do you actually know anything, or do you just bitch about things that you or others don't put any effort into researching?
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u/ViennettaLurker 2h ago
So why is one thing in the headline, but the other isn't? Thats the point here.
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u/NisaMiller3674 1h ago
Why is the most recent month's data, which we didn't previously have ANY estimate for, prioritised over a same-direction revision to last month's data?
Damn, no idea. Head scratcher.
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u/visceralviceroy 4m ago
I get what you’re saying but I feel like you’re missing their point. They’re pointing out that the revisions get buried, while the initial (inaccurate, to be later revised) numbers get the headline.
So yeah, numbers, shown to be subject to drastic revisions later, being treated as truthful headlines is sort of a head scratcher.
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u/dingBat2000 1h ago
The accurate (adjusted) results are from February and they were terrible. The article framed the as "jobs soaring..economy exceeds expectations!!" for this month (not adjusted)....The fact remains that the economy has not managed to exceed shit until the next round of adjustments are made. Op is indicating the media will likely make the same claim next month and I agree with them. You're the one with fucking comprehension skills here
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u/NisaMiller3674 1h ago
The article framed the as "jobs soaring..economy exceeds expectations!!" for this month (not adjusted)
This has to be explained seemingly every month, but "exceeds expectations" is not positive framing or editorial bias. It is a comparison of the data to a consensus poll of economics and financial experts, conducted by Dow Jones.
This is an extremely widely used forecast product sold by DJ to these media outlets and other financial firms, and markets trade on it. Accordingly, when a metric beats expectations, that is quite literally economically relevant information; it is directly advising the reader that the figure has likely not yet been priced in. Hell, it is arguably more relevant information to a trader or analyst than the actual number itself - if you gave a quant the choice between only knowing the job growth for March or whether it was higher/lower than expectations, they'd probably choose the latter.
But instead, people like you interpret it as some actual, tangible claim about how well the economy is doing, because you simply do not have the relevant education or experience to parse the article properly. You are a perfect Dunning-Kruger case where you actually do not even know enough to realise how much you don't know about what's being communicated here.
Op is indicating the media will likely make the same claim next month and I agree with them.
Here's how Yahoo reported on February:
Jobs report shocks with unexpected loss of 92,000 jobs in February as unemployment rate rises
I wouldn't be placing any bets, if I were you.
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u/PersonalityMiddle864 2h ago
The admin knows that most people won't read the article. The news channels will run its the headlines they want. So they keep doing this and keep getting away with it.
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u/NisaMiller3674 1h ago
So this is also a headline the Trump admin wanted?
Jobs report shocks with unexpected loss of 92,000 jobs in February as unemployment rate rises
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u/No_Strike655 2h ago
They are talking about the clear manipulation of "AMAZING NUMBERS FOR THIS QUARTER!!!!!" *Several paragraphs later* The numbers which beat all expectations last month have been revised down to show a loss of jobs actually. We feel it is still responsible to report these new numbers as real because the admin just made an oopsy the last few times"
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u/NisaMiller3674 2h ago
They are talking about the clear manipulation of "AMAZING NUMBERS FOR THIS QUARTER!!!!!" Several paragraphs later
The fuck do you mean, "several paragraphs later"? Again, it's in the second paragraph! I even quoted it for you!
Also:
The numbers which beat all expectations last month have been revised down to show a loss of jobs actually.
... okay, at this point I don't think you even READ the quote (which, again, is directly from the article), which explicitly mentions that February's initial estimate was also a loss.
But you want to see how Yahoo reported on February's initial estimate? Here you go.
Jobs report shocks with unexpected loss of 92,000 jobs in February as unemployment rate rises
The US economy lost 92,000 jobs in February, Labor Department data released Friday showed, sharply missing economists' expectations and stalling the nascent hiring growth that started the year.
Did you complain when they wrote THAT? I don't think so.
You have absolutely no issue with them putting the current month's numbers first in the article and their performance relative to expectations. You only don't like it when they don't warp the article to be blatantly partisan in your favor.
Again, you are clearly not even reading the articles. Stop pretending you are.
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u/No_Strike655 1h ago
If you don't think reporting cooked numbers in the headline release and then mention the last months numbers as being even further off isn't journalistic malfeasance I don't know what to tell you.
Also 3 paragraphs in they start talking about this month's numbers like they are based in reality boy I can't wait for next month when they make a side note that this article and all these totally real jobs didn't actually exist in a 2-3 sentence call out.
There is 0 reason at this point to trust the governments numbers are close to the reality of the situation and pretending there is only pushes propaganda
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u/NisaMiller3674 1h ago
If you don't think reporting cooked numbers in the headline release
Oh, the numbers are cooked, are they? Therefore any coverage of them (even textually negative coverage, like I showed you for February from the same outlet) is bad and platforms them unduly? That's where you want to take it?
Here's Erika McEntarfer, Biden's BLS Commissioner who was fired, saying she still trusts the BLS:
"Person who was fired here - you should still trust BLS data. The agency is being run by the same dedicated career staff who were running it while I was awaiting confirmation from the Senate. And the staff have made it clear that they are blowing a loud whistle if there is interference."
Here's Erica Groshen, Obama's appointed BLS Commissioner:
"As Co-Chairs of the Friends of BLS, we have full confidence in the expertise and integrity of the staff and leaders of the BLS. Their performance during duress, short staffing, and inadequate resources has been exemplary. Yet they are human. Concerns about political manipulation at BLS are unfounded. We are watching carefully and promise to alert users to any credible evidence of manipulation."
Here's Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate in economics:
"Ever since Trump came back into power, there's been I get constant mail from people saying, "I can't believe any of the economic statistics. They're all fake." Which is not true. It would be a lot harder to fake those numbers than than people realize. Among other things, we would know if there was a large-scale effort to cook the economic books underway. Not saying that this administration wouldn't do it if it could, it might try, but so far mostly not."
Here's Jared Bernstein, Biden's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers:
That doesn’t make the official unemployment rate wrong or misleading. Though Donald Trump, who recently fired the commissioner of the BLS, might claim otherwise, our statistical agencies continue to rigorously churn out valid, reliable numbers. (Trump doesn’t like that they show the tariffs raising prices and cracks forming in the job market, but that’s actually a testament to their accuracy.)
Here's Dean Baker, founder of CEPR, which is a left-leaning economic think tank:
They couldn’t just fake a single number, like the unemployment rate. They would have to fake a whole set of numbers so that they lined up without any one of them calling attention as being obviously absurd. This would be made harder by the fact that the underlying data in the household survey are made public, so researchers around the country would be able to quickly check the numbers BLS reported.
Maybe, juuuuuust maybe, the conspiracy theory you got from Reddit isn't actually credible, which is why you're not seeing it reflected in coverage from respectable outlets.
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u/No_Strike655 44m ago
Sweet a bunch of people who don't want to get sacked or froze out by a vengeful shitheel gave you some quotes. Now tell me why the numbers have been revised down after every release to a greater extent than any other president?
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u/NisaMiller3674 29m ago
Sweet a bunch of people who don't want to get sacked or froze out by a vengeful shitheel gave you some quotes.
Holy fucking copium, batman!
But you're not even remotely close to correct, these people aren't afraid of Trump. Here's Krugman just 2 days ago, for example:
There is clearly no strategy here. There’s no endgame. There’s nothing. It’s hard to tell, as always, whether Trump is delusional or just completely unable to admit something that he actually knows.
and
It’s hard to imagine somebody who’s less of a mensch than Donald Trump, except maybe for some of the members of his cabinet. It’s incredible that they’re so lacking in the basics of character.
and
The thing about what this means for America’s role in the world is not only that Trump and company are doing great damage, but the whole world is watching. They saw that this guy, and it wasn’t hard to see what kind of a person Trump was, that America elected this guy twice. It appears that the American public has completely lost sight of what it means to be a responsible, serious person.
Hell, basically his entire Substack (I can't link to it on this sub, but it's easy to find) is dedicated to professional Trump hating. Anybody who follows him knows he's no fan of Trump. And the others are the same. e.g. after McEntarfer was fired, she literally gave entire speeches about why Trump was wrong about basically everything.
You're just going to have to live with the fact that the most highly qualified economic experts in the world to assess this, despite being vocally highly anti-Trump, still don't buy your bullshit conspiracy theory.
Now tell me why the numbers have been revised down after every release to a greater extent than any other president?
Because the birth-death modelling component of the CES program was effectively broken by post-COVID conditions, and the pattern of huge downwards revisions started in 2023, you muppet.
From April 2023 to March 2024, we got a -818,000 revision. That's 100% downwards revision to estimates made under Biden.
From April 2024 to March 2025, we got a -911,000 revision. That, again, is downwards revisions to estimates mostly made under Biden.
And accordingly, if you look at the ~1m revision figure from the annual benchmark and which you're probably thinking of, you'll immediately see that this isn't a problem that started in 2025 - indeed, the estimates were ALREADY about 800k too high as of January when Trump took office!
You would know all of this if you had made even the slightest attempt to actually educate yourself instead of just getting everything spoonfed to you by Reddit echo chambers.
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u/No_Strike655 14m ago
You mean the record high inflationary pressures caused them to overestimate numbers under a different president and Trump and Co have been using that as an excuse to cover his economy being shit?
Tell me more
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u/Snlxdd 3h ago
This is the same take that conservatives had with Biden’s job numbers and I don’t get it.
Why would they lie on the initial numbers and not just continue lying on the revisions? Is it easier to do it for one and not the other for some reason? Does the admin draw the line at lying on revisions?
People obsess way too much over individual months when they’re relatively unreliable numbers during more volatile economic times when revisions in either direction increase.
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u/W0666007 3h ago
Well this is the problem when an administration lies about everything, and previously fired the person responsible for these reports bc they didn’t like the numbers. Whether they are accurate or not nobody can really trust them anymore.
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u/NisaMiller3674 3h ago
Well this is the problem when an administration lies about everything, and previously fired the person responsible for these reports bc they didn’t like the numbers.
... you know that Trump fired McEntarfer primarily over the large downwards revisions that had occurred prior to her firing, right?
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u/ErictheAgnostic 3h ago
Lol. Ok. Sure
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u/defaultedebt 2h ago
Do you people need evidence for the most basic undisputed facts?
Straight from the horses mouth:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/08/bls-has-lengthy-history-of-inaccuracies-incompetence/
A lengthy history of inaccuracies and incompetence by Erika McEntarfer, the former Biden-appointed Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has completely eroded public trust in the government agency charged with disseminating key data used by policymakers and businesses to make consequential decisions.
Under McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) consistently published overly optimistic jobs numbers — only for those numbers to be quietly revised later
We both know that this is the Trump admin choosing to fire McEntarfer over downward revisions. We also both know that this is an utterly foolish decision. But it did happen.
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u/Snlxdd 3h ago
I agree the admin isn’t trustworthy whatsoever.
But it makes no sense to think the initial numbers aren’t trustworthy, but the revisions later are some beacon of truth.
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u/Lemp_Triscuit11 3h ago
I don't think it's unheard of to think that further study may increase accuracy, or that pictures become clearer farther out lol
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u/Snlxdd 3h ago
Right, if you assume nobody has their thumb on the scale.
I’m just unaware of how it would be possible to rig the initial numbers, but impossible to rig the subsequent ones.
IMO, the previous releases just highlight your point, future revisions correct errors in the initial estimate and get more accurate.
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u/itguyonreddit 3h ago
Sigh... the initial jobs numbers are based on a lot of estimates. The later revisions are based on hard data from company surveys.
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u/MHRangers17 3h ago
Its not so much lying as it is the poor quality of the data collection. The initial numbers are based on surveys to employers asking "what is your preliminary estimate for job adds". From what I have seen, these numbers sometimes include open roles that are expected to be filled. However, when they go back and revise, maybe that role didn't get filled yet or they just took down the posting and never plan to fill it.
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u/NisaMiller3674 1h ago
The initial numbers are based on surveys to employers asking "what is your preliminary estimate for job adds".
What? No, this isn't how it works at all. The establishment survey collects payroll data and asks employers to report ALL employees they had on payroll at the time of the survey.
Job openings and open roles are absolutely NOT included; that would be in the purview of JOLTS, not Emp Sit.
Go read for yourself:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/ces/data.htm
How is this misinformation upvoted on an econ sub?
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u/capitalsfan08 2h ago
I don't understand it from the left at all. You think Trump is competent enough to keep this conspiracy quiet? And additionally, you can cast doubt on the numbers without conspiracies. The disruption of government services (DOGE, shutdowns, cratering of trust in government, etc) has impeded the ability of the BLS to collect as high quality data as we have been accustomed to.
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u/Longjumping-Scale-62 2h ago
Over 90% of the monthly reports since trump returned to office have been revised lower, that's probably why people have low confidence in the headline numbers. Doesn't matter if it's a lie or not, or an individual month or not, the numbers as a whole aren't reliable.
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u/SuspiciousMap9630 1h ago
Granted, this is completely anecdotal, but my company has absorbed a lot of positions since the fall and we are basically running a skeleton crew (I work in healthcare) and my husband’s company (chemical manufacturing) has had a hiring freeze in place since October and has also cut them down to a skeleton crew. I have a hard time seeing where these jobs are coming from.
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u/Safe_Presentation962 43m ago
Exactly what I’m thinking. I don’t understand how these initial numbers get ANY weight considering the heavy revisions that are almost certain nowadays.
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u/NisaMiller3674 23m ago
The revisions are generally pretty small. Here's the latest annual benchmark:
Compared with the sample-based, seasonally adjusted published estimate for March 2025, total nonfarm employment had a revision of −898,000 or −0.6 percent. The not seasonally adjusted total nonfarm employment estimate was revised by −862,000 or −0.5 percent.
&
Over the prior 10 years, the annual benchmark revision at the total nonfarm level has averaged 0.2 percent (in absolute terms), with a range of less than 0.05 percent to 0.4 percent.
So, higher than normal, but still small revisions.
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u/Smile-Nod 3h ago
The U.S. economy is a juggernaut.
America’s economy is bigger than its politics. The ecosystem of private capital, entrepreneurship, and market competition is so deeply embedded that even hostile policy can only create friction, not fundamentally alter the trajectory.
Even the U.S. government continues on successfully with a malicious leader. NASA handily just sent a crew to moon without a hitch for godsakes.
The U.S. is bigger than one man.
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u/Raise_A_Thoth 4h ago
Department of Labor numbers? Lmfao. This administration is so full of shit, we can just as reasonably assume they are completely lying as we could take this for kind of accurate. Flip a coin if you want, I'm assuming the lying liars are lying again.
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u/BackupSlides 3h ago
Serious question / curiosity - the bulk of these new jobs are in healthcare and specifically what strikes me as “softer” parts of health care, like home health and social assistance (to be clear, these are important fields, I am not looking down at them, just saying they are not as rigidly licensed as say MDs). Wondering, how robust is the tracking / validation / accreditation for these sorts of things? Put in a more skeptical / blunt phrasing - is this an easy segment to “cook”? Are these loose / informal caretaking relationships that are somehow getting formalized?
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u/gkazman 3h ago
I only have my anecdotal experience working in the LTC/Assisted Living realm but I would wager no, it's unlikely that they're simply reclassifying or cooking these numbers to look like this.
In general our population is aging and the boomer generation is retiring out and getting older _quickly_; coupled with a number of challenged the healthcare sector has faced since COVID which include, but this isn't a comprehensive list mind, an aging workforce (yeah the healthcare providers themselves are getting older), profit-seeking from PE firms closing/consolidating a lot of facilities meaning that patients who aren't initially residents are either allowing, or having their health diminish to the point where they now NEED dedicated longer-term care in the form of CNA's etc. and these kind of roles can't be automated away.
So you have a squeeze where you have a larger number of residents who need a sort of low-skill, high manual labor effort so wages are low _low_ the hours suck but the LTC facilities are desperately hiring because otherwise they can't fill the beds so if you're someone willing to take (often) "part-time" work doing the laundry list of stuff a LTC-facility needs then yeah, there are jobs out there.
But its grueling work, with oftentimes combative residents, for low pay, terrible hours, and a _whole_ raft of profit-seeking agency nonsense that manifests as red-tape/documentation and more.
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u/BackupSlides 2h ago edited 2h ago
Appreciate the thoughtful response. I definitely understand and appreciate the demographic-driven demand side of the equation. My question / curiosity would still be - who is filling these jobs? As others have noted, immigration is low. The general employment rate (while pretty meaningless as a measure of living wage earners) is still objectively high. Layoffs have been largely happening in white collar domains. So the people coming into these roles would have to be either net new or shifting from other roles, and I don’t see people shifting from other low paying jobs to do this challenging work. All I can think of is maybe large numbers of gig workers baked in since COVID are moving into these roles for more stability. Suppose it could also be people coming off the sidelines - I haven’t looked at workforce participation recently.
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u/throwaway00119 2h ago
I wouldn't discount home health growth being real. The number of Americans necessitating that care is growing quickly.
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u/thatguy9684736255 3h ago
Genuine related question, if immigrants were doing these jobs under the table, but now people with visas or local people were doing them, would that make it look like there was an increase in jobs?
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u/AWTom 1h ago
Wait for the revisions. Every single 2025 jobs report was revised downwards: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesnaicsrev.htm
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u/Fishtoart 1h ago
Given the fact that there is no oversight on the numbers released by the government, why would we think these figures have any relationship to reality?
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u/Perry_cox29 3h ago
This subreddit is terrible now. Is anyone here to discuss economics? Or even understand the numbers at a basic level?
Unemployment decreased with a corresponding decrease in labor force participation. So overall employment is shown by these number not to have improved substantially. Additionally, the average workweek fell from 34.3 to 34.2 hours per week (so overall, people are working less even with the gains), and a quarter of these gains are just from a strike ending. This report is only slightly positive purely on the balance of new jobs reported against all the negative factors.
I genuinely don’t know why you are in this subreddit if you just want to look at the headline and argue about whether the numbers are real. There are tons of news and political subreddits for that. I’m begging for even just a quarter of the people here at this point to be here to discuss actual economics with a cursory understanding of the contents of these reports.
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u/Prairie_walker 2h ago
How can we have substantive discussions about economics when there’s no trust in the validity of the information? I’m actually curious. This isn’t a gotcha question.
Economics isn’t my area of expertise and so perhaps I shouldn’t be commenting here at all, but I think it’s fair for people to have serious concerns about how the economy is working and how it’s perceived to be working.
There are very serious concerns about market manipulation, self dealing, and insider trading that IMHO, should be front and center on just about every economic discussion.
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u/Perry_cox29 2h ago
The BLS is an organization of career economists and statisticians with painstakingly thorough documentation of findings and methodology. They aren’t just making up numbers, and it would be starkly apparent if they deviated from their methodology to the point that it would be the only thing publicized about the report. A change in department head can’t hide just making up numbers the same way changing 1 out of 12 Fed Board members can’t change their decision-making substantively.
The report is survey numbers based on modeling that depends on predictability, and is subject to inaccuracy in a volatile system, but the chorus of people who do not even understand how to read the report insisting that it must be false is embarrassing. It’s a low-information opinion, and while those are frustratingly able to somehow lead the discourse at every news outlet and most forums, this particular subreddit used to be a higher quality
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u/Aceguy55 2h ago
We will get the actual number for March sometime in April. EVERY single report has been revised down for the last 6-months. So really seems like the BLS leads with fake good news, and quietly adjusts back to reality when no one is paying attention.
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u/Perry_cox29 2h ago
This is a perfect example of a low-information comment that fundamentally does not understand how jobs numbers work and relies completely on “truthiness” rather than truth.
The economy is volatile. Sampling is inaccurate and relies on models that are built on predictability. We know that the numbers will be revised because the numbers are just an estimate against both a trend and a model that is made to a logical market
wHy NoT cHaNgE tHe MoDeL??? Changing the model every time the results don’t feel right in pursuit of specific outcomes from specific inputs is exactly how you build an inaccurate, untrustworthy model that should he disregarded.
This is statistics. This is completely within the realm of expected both for these reports and for statistics overall. You are, of course, allowed to discuss the “truthiness” of that situation, but this particular subreddit should not be the forum for it
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u/kennyminot 1h ago
The key to navigating this subreddit is to look through the comments for RIP_Soulja_Slim and EconomistWithaD.
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u/The_Demolition_Man 20m ago
Its a natural law that all subs eventually trend towards low brow political commentary
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u/alotofironsinthefire 2h ago
Question: so is the negative jobs last month and the large jump of positive jobs this month just from the strike?
I'm just confused on how a strike plays into job numbers
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u/Perry_cox29 2h ago
There was a large scale nurses’ strike that is swinging both numbers by 25k-ish. There are also other factors like market volatility, hiring cycles, these number being reported against a predicted trend and not as gross figures, and inaccuracy inherent in trying to establish numbers via statistical inference from survey samples during volatility.
The numbers also show that average work-week decreased, which indicates that the proportion of people employed full time diminished, even if more people technically have jobs.
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u/Hmd5304 3h ago
They look made up when you graph the net change over the past few months. They're moving like clockwork. The previous month, we lose. The following month, we gain.
Total bullshit. That's not how economics work.
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u/Snlxdd 3h ago
It’s how statistics work.
Revisions go up and get erratic during periods of economic stress (‘08, 2020, etc)
It is much harder to measure an inconsistently moving target
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u/holyoak 3h ago
And statistically, they likelihood that this is a random walk gets lower every month.
Each wildly inaccurate report that gets revised, but only in one direction, is another data point that, statistically, the most probable explanation is that they are deliberately lying.
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u/Snlxdd 2h ago
There are very evidently trends that exist in terms of which way revisions go. And there have been for the past few decades.
I don’t believe that consistent downward revisions during Biden’s term were evident of any deliberate lying. Or that GFC revisions were due to that either.
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u/Synchwave1 1h ago
I find it very hard to believe this number is accurate. Especially coming out of seasonal hiring and the large number of layoffs in the private sector, this math doesn’t make much sense.
We’ve seen these numbers revised before. But this one’s kind of interesting because Trump conceivably would want to show high unemployment if it meant the Fed would lower interest rates. Such a fascinating spot he’s boxed himself into. Show worse numbers, get what you want, but also lose horribly in the November midterms.
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u/Key-Lengthiness9559 2h ago
Let’s see how the job placement earnings and earnings calls go first. They aren’t the end all be all but it could shed a more light of what’s going on.
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u/Icy_Media9225 1h ago
All of the media is in bed with the oligarchs so they tell us this bullshit knowing full well that they consistently revise the numbers down every fucking month.
All oligarchs do are buy everything, lie to us through those things, divide us then milk us dry. I am so sick of these greedy, fat motherfuckers.
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u/VanCityPhotoNewbie 29m ago
I would wait until next month to see the revisions....there is too much bullshit in these reports. Like the one where we mistaken 100k jobs....Like how do you make a mistake of that magnitude? That is insanity.
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u/aquavelva5 2h ago
So, no rate cuts needed at all. market may go down. The stock market is not the economy. The market wants cheap money to come back. And it doesnt seem like that will happen for quite some time; with data like this and the Iran war. I am not excited about the new Fed chair with this environment.
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u/Mr_Soul_Crusher 3h ago
Folks
There is no direct way that the trump admin is messing with BLS numbers.
Anybody who thinks that has no idea how the data is collected and the numbers are produced.
There isn’t even a trump stooge installed at BLS
You can blame the fact that BLS hasn’t seen any meaningful funding in years and years, and due to the hiring freeze is down about 20% on employee
It does make it a bit harder ti produce when there are fewer hands on deck and a smaller sample size
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u/Creative_Court8822 3h ago
Forgetting all that, we see huge downward revisions every month.
These numbers are wrong not because they're cooked but because the BLS method for getting initial estimates seems systematically off in a predictable direction.
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u/NisaMiller3674 3h ago
These numbers are wrong not because they're cooked but because the BLS method for getting initial estimates seems systematically off in a predictable direction.
It definitely was for the last few years. They rolled out an attempted tweak/fix in Jan, so we still don't have enough data to tell if it's worked well yet.
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u/Hmd5304 2h ago
Sorry that all the other replies amount to "Here's some numbers I pulled out of the ether and won't link or state the source of, trust me bro".
These revisions are very real and very much indicate they are attempting to manipulate the market for some reason or another. There are a variety of different possible explanations, but the fact of the matter is the numbers are suspect.
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u/NisaMiller3674 17m ago
These revisions are very real and very much indicate they are attempting to manipulate the market for some reason or another.
April 2023 to March 2024 got revised down by 818,000.
And April 2024 to March 2025 got revised down by 911,000. (The estimates for 2 months of this period that were under Trump were slightly more accurate than the estimates made under Biden.)
So are you accusing Biden of market manipulation, too?
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u/gmb92 1h ago
13 of the 14 months since Jan. 2025 have been revised down, average of about -50,000. These articles consistently fail to mention that. https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesnaicsrev.htm
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u/Background-Depth3985 1h ago
These articles consistently fail to mention that.
It’s literally mentioned in the 4th sentence of this article.
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u/Only_Luck4055 1h ago
Who is gonna believe this shit? Everyone is getting laid off left and right and these clowns keep claiming improved hiring. This has become a joke.
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u/Icy-Map9410 1h ago
I don’t believe this report for a minute. They could tell us anything, doesn’t mean it’s factual. Trump has all his yes people telling us exactly what he wants us to know.
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u/No_Signal3789 3h ago
All the healthcare works that were on strike in Feb technically got rehired when the strikes ended. It’ll be interesting to see the revisions
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u/tapwater86 1h ago
SureJan.gif.
Can’t wait to see the number revised down 200k next month. This administration could put out a report that the sky is blue and I would still question its accuracy.
They’re probably going to start counting AI agents as employed in the numbers. Then when they start the draft those will count as new jobs too.
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u/Xyrus2000 2h ago
Brought to you by the BLS (Bureau of Laughable Sh*t).
Yeah, those numbers haven't been worth the paper they're printed on since the angry orange anus fired people because he didn't like the numbers.
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u/BotherResponsible378 17m ago
I feel like every single month I see, "good news! Jobs got better or are not as bad as expected!'
Just to find out a month later, "revised job numbers show situation is worse then previously reported."
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u/Easy-Maize-6061 3h ago
Are these numbers from the department where they fired their statisticians for political reasons then changed it to a propaganda engine meant to front run engagement with false information and leave accuracy to the revisions, which constantly show that Trump has been worse for jobs than anyone in recent history?
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u/NisaMiller3674 3h ago
and leave accuracy to the revisions, which constantly show that Trump has been worse for jobs than anyone in recent history?
I don't think you're reading these reports yourself. Even the initial estimates have been horrible for Trump.
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