Why U.S. jobs numbers get revised (no, it's not a conspiracy)
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When the apolitical officials at the Bureau of Labor Statistics get new information about the economy, they update prior data to reflect that reality.
Why it matters: A string of public figures and social media commentators have incorrectly suggested that the monthly jobs figures are "fake," pointing to the number of downward revisions in recent months.
- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) is the latest, blasting the BLS on Friday after a blockbuster September jobs report showed the economy is nowhere near a recession.
Zoom out: The jobs report, released on the first Friday of each month at 8:30am ET, gets updated twice in as many months.
- There's no conspiracy and it isn't political: The agency evaluates information that wasn't available at the time of the initial report, and revises the numbers as appropriate.
What they're saying: "The numbers aren't faked, there is no way they can be faked," William Beach, the former Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner — appointed by former President Trump — tells Axios.
- "Folks who say this don't know enough about how the revisions work," Beach added.
How it works: The BLS — a nonpartisan statistical agency within the Labor Department — releases the jobs report, a look at the change in employment from the previous month.
- It's among the most important pieces of economic data that can move financial markets globally.
- Officials at the BLS survey about 629,000 work sites to project the nationwide estimate for how many jobs have been created (or lost).
- But sometimes the businesses don't respond in time before the report is released. The BLS continues to take reports from those businesses, helping inform the revisions published in the following two months.
- This is just one of two surveys that comprise the labor market data — the other is a survey of households, which helps BLS calculate the unemployment rate. (The unemployment rate is not revised monthly.)
Context: The initial reported data is "the quick but lower resolution snapshot of what went on in the job market for a particular month," BLS officials wrote in 2012.
- The revisions, which have been conducted since 1979, can be so large that they change the perspective of the current state of economy, especially if a large company is late to report payrolls data.
- It is true that jobs have been revised away over the past year, but "it's also the case that the process of data revisions has also moved in more positive directions too," Rick Rieder, CIO of global fixed income at BlackRock, wrote in a note.
The intrigue: There are also annual revisions to job figures conducted by the BLS. That, too, is based on more complete information after it becomes available.
- The BLS adjusts its estimates for payrolls to reflect official tax data that wasn't available at the time of initially reporting monthly numbers.
- The revisions can be meaningful: The first for 2024 showed the economy added 818,000 fewer jobs in the 12 months through March.
The big picture: Trump and other Republican lawmakers falsely claimed these revisions were partisan.
- But the same happened while Trump was in office: The BLS posted revisions that showed there were roughly 500,000 fewer jobs in the 12 months through March 2019 than initially thought.
Beach responded to false claims that the agency had wanted to bury the most recent annual revisions, which came out in August as planned, until after the election:
- "For those who think the big revision to the BLS jobs numbers 'leaked' and was meant to come out after the election, remember that BLS always announces its draft revisions in August and announced this year's date, August 21, many months ago. It is important to check your facts," Beach said on X.
