Once again, the parrots are squawking nonsense about foreign-born employment.
The above chart is an admitted lie by the BLS.
The jump in January of 2025 never happened, as presented, according to the BLS itself.
Rather, it depicts in a single month, massive undercounting of jobs from 2020 through 2024.
Adjustments to Household Survey Population Estimates in January 2025
The Adjustments to Household Survey Population Estimates in January 2025 were enormous.
The January 2025 adjustment was large relative to adjustments in past years and reflects both updated methodology and new information about net international migration. While the January 2025 adjustment reflects cumulative change back to the 2020 Census blended population base, it largely reflects an increase in net international migration that was concentrated in recent years. To show the impact on the labor force data, BLS uses special tabulations of December data that incorporate the new population controls. When applied to December 2024, the January 2025 adjustment increased the estimated size of the civilian noninstitutional population 16 years and over by 2.9 million people (or 1.1 percent). The adjustment increased the civilian labor force by 2.1 million, including an increase of 2.0 million in employment and an increase of 105,000 in unemployment.
Historical data comparability
The introduction of population controls affects the comparability of estimates over time. In accordance with usual practice, official household survey estimates for December 2024 and earlier months were not revised. Consequently, household survey data for January 2025 will not be directly comparable with data for December 2024 or earlier periods. Although the official estimates were not revised, BLS will produce experimental time series back to April 2020 for the labor force and the employed that account for the January 2025 population control effects. These experimental series will be available in the CPS technical documentation shortly after the publication of the Employment Situation news release on February 7, 2025.
January 2025 Adjustments
The BLS admits that it undercounted employment by 2 million, spread out over years. Instead of parsing that out in the correct months, the BLS plowed the entire adjustment into January of 2025.
People who ought to know better (and I believe do) prefer to parrot the administration on the amazing job Trump is allegedly doing.
Nonsense of the Day
Wall Street Mav, Peter St Onge, PhD., and E.J, Antoni, Ph.D. are all bright enough to know better.
Employment Levels 2025 Benchmark Adjusted
Instead of plopping 2 million jobs in January of 2025, I parsed them out evenly to 2020. That is surely not accurate, but it is a much closer approximation than obvious (and admitted) garbage.
Again, do note that the BLS says the 2024-12 unadjusted number employment number is 163,294,000.
Outright Lies vs Adjusted Data
- If we take the known lies (lead chart), we can subtract November of 2025 from November of 2024 and conclude Trump created a rise in employment of 2.610 million (164,066,000 – 161,456,000).
- If we take more accurate adjusted data (above chart), we can subtract November of 2025 from November of 2024 and conclude Trump created a rise in employment of 644,000 (164,066,000 – 163,422,000).
Bear in mind more annual revisions are coming in February of 2026 (for 2025). I expect negative revisions. So, 644,000 is still on the high side vs 2.6 million+ estimates from parrots.
But those negative revisions once again will not be applied to the official data, so it’s all total bullsheet all around.
Employment Levels US and US Born
I find it amusing that people who do not believe a damn thing the BLS says (and rightfully so), go posting obvious BLS bullsheet because they just cannot take off their MAGA hat.
Q: So how much did foreign born employment drop?
A: Did it? And why does it matter?
The problem with foreign-born is that it excludes many who are now US citizens. The BLS makes no distinction between US citizens and foreigners in the classification of foreign born.
Revelio Says Payrolls Decline by 9,000 the 5th Drop in 7 Months
Note that Revelio Labs estimates year-over-year employment is up by 186,000.
That’s a much more believable number.
How Fast is the US Shedding Foreign-Worker Jobs?
On December 11, 2025 I asked How Fast is the US Shedding Foreign-Worker Jobs?
Think carefully.
Foreign-born includes US citizens.
There is one more big issue. Since there is widespread disbelief in BLS numbers, why are we supposed to believe this set of BLS numbers?
Are Illegal immigrants suddenly responding to BLS household surveys?
Notice the subtle but important distinction. I said foreign-worker not foreign-born.
I did have an error in my post though. I said “The only valid comparison one can make now with unadjusted BLS numbers is September of 2025 to September of 2024.”
With unadjusted data, year-over-year comparisons is all one can do. That part was accurate. However, BLS data is so screwed up, that year-over-year comparisons are flawed as well.
It’s all garbage, something that I have pointed out many times.
It’s really sad to see a parade of people challenging every BLS report for years, suddenly become believers that that we created 2 million jobs in a single month in January of 2025, all of them US born.
Revelio says foreign worker employment is actually on the rise. Click on the above link for details.
Addendum
Every month I post disclaimers in my analysis of the monthly jobs reports. Here are some comments from my November report.
All of this data is grossly distorted. I highly doubt nonfarm payrolls are nearly a half-million to the good in 2025.
And that -1.7 million decline in fulltime employment looks skewed in the other direction.
These distortions are compounded by what I believe to be nonsensical annual revisions in January. [Note: The annual revisions may be in the ballpark. The historical charts are not because of the way the BLS handles historical data.]
There is no reason to believe any of these reports, but let’s discuss the information anyway.
Household Survey vs. Payroll Survey
- The payroll survey (sometimes called the establishment survey) is the headline jobs number. It is based on employer reporting.
- The household survey is a phone survey conducted by the BLS. It measures employment, unemployment and other factors.
If you work one hour, you are employed. If you don’t have a job and fail to look for one, you are not considered unemployed, rather, you drop out of the labor force.
Looking for job openings on Jooble or Monster or in the want ads does not count as “looking for a job”. You need an actual interview or send out a resume.
These distortions artificially lower the unemployment rate, artificially boost full-time employment, and artificially increase the payroll jobs report every month.
The BLS payroll reports smack of oversampling large employers and undersampling small employers where jobs have been trending lower.
Birth Death Model
Starting January 2014, I dropped the Birth/Death Model charts from this report.
The birth-death model pertains to the birth and death of corporations not individuals except by implication.
For those who follow the numbers, I retain this caution: Do not subtract the reported Birth-Death number from the reported headline number. That approach is statistically invalid.
Part-Time Jobs
The above numbers never total correctly due to the way the BLS makes seasonal adjustments. I list them as reported.
Final Thoughts
Five months ago I said “The BLS monthly data is total garbage. I do the best I can with BLS data.”
Four months ago, I said “The stench is so powerful that no one can pretend there is not a massive data collection, sampling problem at the BLS.”
Two months ago, I said “Not only is BLS sampling more than a bit questionable, but the birth-death model is proven garbage, and ICE raids are distorting immigrants’ ability and willingness to answer phone surveys by anyone working for the government.”
This month I note still more negative revisions.
Negative revisions have been huge for a couple years. Coming out of of the Covid recession the revisions were hugely positive.
The charts reflect little of this. And the 2025 annual revision was massive. On a percentage basis, however it’s seemingly tiny. For example, a 2-million adjustment to 164 million jobs is only only 1.2 percent.
However, a 2 million adjustment making that turns a year-over-year gain of 600,000 into 2,600,000 is a stupefying error.
All of the historical data from both the household and establishment surveys is garbage.
My lead chart is certainly not accurate, but it is in the ballpark, not from Mars.
Looking ahead, I am no longer going to use the lead chart I typically post in my monthly jobs reports. Even though I point out it’s garbage, why post garbage.
Instead, I will use Benchmark Adjusted charts and post those.
Business Employment Dynamics report for Q1 2025 came out today, worth a look.
https://www.bls.gov/bdm/
More accurate than NFP, but laggy.
“why post garbage.”
I respect this notion. It is possible that @Mish and I are the only two people on the planet at agree with it.
It’s funny how everyone thinks the president has such great influence on the economy. Biden didn’t. Trump doesn’t. Some influence, but not very much.
Pathetically perfect:
parrots perched and peddling propaganda…
as the pirate presidency persistently plunders.
I went out to lunch yesterday and the entire shopping strip was empty. This area is full of shops and restaurants. We were the only ones in the restaurant for most of the time then one other couple showed up. The restaurant next door was empty.
I live in a city of millions of people and few are eating out. This is Trump’s golden age. Stats may lie but reality doesn’t.
I see that too in counties I go to . But, in 3 days we are 11 months into Trump
Like the Biden 4 years didnt have any effect here? I think that your last 2 sentences is a litle disingenuous at best.
My rant is not directed at you personally but its apparent now that
Trump is everybodys whipping boy now for everything that has gone wrong in America which has been building for many years now. Its like just say its Trumps fault and that explains everything. That is lazy and short term thinking and many times just utter bullshit.
NY City is bankrupting NYS thanks to the Biden open borders . They just have not asked for the money yet. MTA, losing billions ……
And yes, Mike, we have to look forward at what the current Admin is trying to do but you can’t downplay or ignore not only the last 4 years but all the things America has done wrong going back to Bush Jr.
NYS will be asking the Federal govt for another bailout, probably 50 Billion counting the MTA. They are just waiting for a Democrat president
Lol Trump is not responsible for the economy but Biden is responsible for New York city. Let that sink in if it’s possible for your mind to absorb and figure out the irony if capable.
You seem to forget that prior to Biden, it was Trump that was president but you use that Biden pacifier to sooth those tears.
At least nobody can blame Herbert Hoover this time around.
all in the family theme song. RIP meathead. i met that guy once. he was filming an action scene at the beverly hills hotel the entire 3 days, while i was at a wall street conference there. i walked up to him when he wasn’t busy and said i enjoyed his acting, i of course called him meathead to his delight. he always joked about that was his legacy no matter if he had cured cancer. poor meathead will be known as the star who was butchered like a pig by his on son.
And unlike the left wing lunatics on social media, I feel horrible that happened. I’m sure Phil from CT thinks I am glad about that or something. I could not stand his political positions, but I do not want to see anyone murdered because of them.
I will rant on his son whom I hope gets the death penalty.
A spoiled white boy that had everything handed to him his entire life including the financial resources to treat everything wrong with him and because mommy and daddy were cutting him off he butchers them.
And the media can spare me the drug addict tears. I have been around dozens and dozens of drug addicts in my past life. Not one of them thought and acted out to butcher anyone let alone their mother and father.
Death penalty.
Biden is responsible for dumping illegal alien so called migrants into NYC that are still be housed closed fed and given free cellphones. Are you telling me that was in the NY City budget? That would be pretty ballsy of these left wing politicians but hey maybe you’re right
Many of those got sent to Poughkeepsie, Kingston, Troy, Albany. Jesus Christ ask anyone that lives near westchester county airport , they were coming in on midnight flights all paid for by us taxpayers
Thats exactly what happened and is still going on, the having to pay everything for them its just the border got closed
But hey call me a racist all you want, it does not change anything but I guess it makes some of you feel better and apparently it makes it all in your mind go away.
Maybe they’ve all gone south for the winter (especially the ones who have money to spend)?
I was in a shopping strip yesterday with the misses because she wanted to go to TJMaxx. This was at 2:30 in the afternoon on a Tuesday. The place was jammed and the checkout line took over 1 hr to check out which is insane to me (she waited, I was running other errands while she shopped). Afterwards at 4:00, we went a couple doors down to our favorite Greek restaurant for a drink and an some apps and the place was 1/4 full with more people coming in while we were there for 45 minutes. The rest of the strip mall parking lot was full of cars for other businesses and restaurants.
Those Greek diners. where an authentic Greek proprietor greets the customers at the door, will always stand the test of time.
Especially when the food and service are very good.
BMIs were much lower before fast food, so there’s that.
So earlier the BLS made a massive jobs reduction to correct overcounting. Now they have a massive upward adjustment for undercounting. Money spent on the BLS is pure waste. What amazes me is professionals paying any attention when monthly numbers are released.
Thank you. DR. You took the words right out of my keyboard.
I trust Mike/Mish but you know what, if the info he is getting is garbage in garbage out I trust none of this but my own eyes
And I too see what MP045v2 said above. And worse probably as I see more & more empty retail commercial retail space and these are above avg Sq Ft spaces
Ulster & Green County NY. But one area were I differ with MP on
the hudson valley and also nyc seems moribund of the usual activity. the trump smoot hawley, bombs away policies which his moron voters wanted are coming home to roost as malcolm X said. the amerikan people love world wide warmongering imperial grifting. the uniparty blue and red are alike in this respect. from top to bottom. the amerikan people are to blame. they get what they want in a democracy.
Thanks to SCOTUS corps are people too. Hence, the rich and powerful will continue to control most of this world. And let’s not forget a slavery era voting system put DT in power in the first place. To wrest power back now would require great effort and there are so many lies flying around that it’s impossible for anyone to trust any information. And that’s DT’s whole strategy. He admitted as much on national television in one of his very first interviews after his first win. And yet the faithful are still faithful. But it might be cracking just a little. Stay tuned…
the amerikan empire has been democratically voting for world wide warfare and bombing of innocent children and innocent poor people since at least 1898. the only known democracy / republic to consistently keep voting for this screwed up behaviour. of course 98% of amerikans cannot handle looking in the mirror for the blame. it’s too ugly an image. these are just facts of life.
The US are a Potemkin village.
People need hope. I’d guess it’s that more than a firm belief in that bls rot.
With nobody to put on the roofs everyone’s house will soon look like The Alamo.