Job market cracks are bigger than they originally looked
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The job market was showing cracks earlier than previously known, according to highly anticipated revisions released Tuesday morning.
Why it matters: The data shifts the understanding of how the labor market performed in 2024 through earlier this year.
- It confirms the hiring slowdown has been underway for some time, raising the stakes that the economy's weakening trend might continue.
What they're saying: "[T]he slower job creation implies income growth was also on a softer footing even prior to the recent rise in policy uncertainty and economic slowdown we've seen since the spring," Nationwide's financial market economist Oren Klachkin wrote in a note.
By the numbers: The economy added 911,000 fewer jobs in the 12 months ending in March 2025 than first estimated, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in preliminary revisions.
- The revisions were steepest, in percentage terms, in the information sector (down 2.3%), wholesale trade (-1.8%) and leisure and hospitality (-1.1%).
- The revisions were larger than the downward adjustment of 700,000 that economists anticipated.
How it works: The BLS compiles monthly jobs reports based on surveys from households and businesses. The agency updates that data, on a lag, with more complete information from unemployment insurance tax records.
- This report — the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages — can show drastic revisions of previously released data.
The intrigue: When the revisions are officially worked into the payrolls numbers starting early next year, average monthly job growth over the April 2024 to March 2025 period will be 71,000 — half of what was first reported.
Of note: In recent weeks, Trump administration officials have used the BLS' revision procedures as a cudgel to attack government statistics, and the new benchmark revisions are no exception.
- "Today's massive downward revision gives the American people even more reason to doubt the integrity of data being published by BLS," Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement Tuesday.
- "[T]here is no room for such a significant and consistent amount of error. It's imperative for the data to remain accurate, impartial, and never altered for political gain," she added. BLS is under her purview, though it has long been run by career technocrats.
- President Trump has seized on data from previous QCEW reports, suggesting — without evidence — the figures were politicized. Last month, he fired the BLS commissioner after revisions showed disappointing job growth over the summer.
Yes, but: It is not uncommon for the BLS to dramatically revise jobs growth — though the downward revision of 911,000 jobs is the largest on record. That figure will be revised once more early next year.
- Like other statistical agencies around the world, the BLS has been plagued by low survey response rates that can result in revisions down the line. Shifts in the economic backdrop can also undermine the agency's models.
- "In steady times, their assumptions are accurate, but at turning points in the cycle they can be significantly wrong," ING chief international economist James Knightley wrote in a note.
The bottom line: The labor market cracks are not new, though they have continued as employers are strained by trade and immigration policies.
