🚨 The U.S. didn’t create 1.4 million jobs last year. It created half that. Here’s how the government overstated 800,000 jobs and why today's numbers might be wrong too. (Share this thread)

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Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" has officially passed in the US House.This means the bill has now passed in the US House and Senate.

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And don’t forget: revisions are normal. The BLS is transparent. Every year, it updates its data. In most years, the revisions are tiny just a rounding error. But in 2024, it was a blowtorch to the entire jobs narrative.

That’s why economists always emphasize triangulation: Don’t just watch payrolls. Look at:. — Unemployment rate.— Labor force participation.— Wage growth.— Household survey.— QCEW (when available). Each offers a piece of the puzzle.

But the broader point is this: Don’t anchor your view of the economy on the initial jobs number. That number is fast but flawed. It’s a sketch, not a portrait.

The Fed likely sees this and thinks:. •  Labor market is softening.•  Unemployment is steady.•  No need to keep rates sky-high. The benchmark revision + today’s report = more room to consider cuts later this year.

And that fits the revised picture perfectly. We’re seeing moderate expansion, not an overheating job market. For the Federal Reserve, this reinforces the case for easing up. No wage spiral. No red flags. Just stable, slowing growth.

Don’t get me wrong, today’s number isn’t bad. It’s actually right in line with the trend:. — May: revised to 139,000.— 12-month average: ~146k–152k. So what this tells us isn’t “booming growth” it tells us the labor market is steady, not hot.

And here's the kicker: We’re still using the same survey. Today (July 3, 2025), the BLS reported a gain of 147,000 jobs in June, and a drop in unemployment to 4.1%. Better than expected but it’s the same survey that missed 800k jobs last year.

This isn’t the first time either. Big benchmark revisions also happened in:. — 2001 (dot-com bust).— 2009 (Great Recession).— 2022 (overestimates flagged by the Philly Fed).— And now again in 2024. These errors always cluster around economic turning points.

Which explains a lot. Remember when people asked, “Why is the unemployment rate rising even though jobs are being added every month?”. Answer: Because those jobs weren’t actually being added. The survey was running hot. The economy was cooling off.

And the biggest overstatements came from:. — Professional & business services (–358k).— Leisure & hospitality (–150k).— Retail (–129k).— Manufacturing (–115k).— Finance, Info, Real Estate: all revised down. White-collar America wasn’t hiring like we thought.

That changes the whole narrative. Instead of adding 242,000 jobs per month in 2024, we were only adding 174,000. That’s not a red-hot labor market, that’s moderate growth at best.

So when the BLS did its annual benchmark revision in August 2024, they aligned the CES with the QCEW and erased 818,000 jobs from the books. This wasn’t a small revision. It was the largest downward adjustment since 2009.

It’s also about sampling error vs. census accuracy. The CES is a survey. It’s fast, but subject to:. — Sampling error.— Non-response bias.— Misreporting.— Modeling assumptions. QCEW is based on real UI filings. No sampling. No modeling. Just data.

Another factor: undocumented workers. If someone is paid under the table or works off-payroll, they might show up in the CES if reported but not in QCEW’s tax data. Goldman Sachs estimates this could explain up to 500,000 of the gap. Still, that leaves a massive chunk.

Meanwhile, the QCEW doesn’t guess. It captures business births and deaths in real time through tax records. That’s one reason it’s considered the “gold standard” for measuring employment.