Annual Household benchmarks were again huge. Smoothed data not yet released. 
Understanding the Lead Chart
Before discussing the February 2026 data, it is important to understand the lead chart.
Every January (typically), the BLS has annual revisions to nonfarm payrolls and household population employment. The BLS does not back revise the household charts.
Because the BLS does not back revise, we see ridiculous numbers such as employment rising by over 2 million in a month (yellow arrow).
To correct for the population adjustments, the BLS provides an adjustment series to normalize employment levels to match nonfarm payrolls. The BLS calls this “experimental” data but the regular posted data is known garbage.
The experimental series is LNS16000000, “Employment Adjusted to CES Concepts“.
The BLS normally releases that series in January. It is finally out today. However, the BLS has not yet released the month-by-month revisions. So, the solid red and yellow lines on my chart are not as shown.
For 2024, the BLS admits that it undercounted employment by 2 million. Instead of parsing that out in the correct months, the BLS plowed the entire adjustment into January of 2025.
For 2025, the BLS admits that it overcounted employment by 1.4 million. Instead of parsing that out in the correct months, the BLS plowed the entire adjustment into January of 2026.
All posts on foreign-born employment suffer this flaw. There are no back adjustments. We did not suddenly add 2.245 million jobs in January of 2025, all US-Born. (Difference between the dashed blue line and the yellow line)
There is no valid data at all on full vs parttime employment, on foreign born employment, etc.
BLS Notes
Effective with revised data for January 2026, updated population estimates were incorporated into the household survey.
The 2026 update was delayed by a month due to the 2025 federal government shutdown. With the release of February data, all household survey data for January 2026 were revised to incorporate the new population estimates.
In accordance with usual practice, BLS did not revise the official household survey estimates for December 2025 and earlier months.
The “usual practice” paragraph above explains why the published data series is garbage.
All standard year-over-year household data comparisons are nonsense.
It’s why I use the experimental series, not yet released for 2025.
My Charts
I will continue to use what the BLS refers to as “experimental data” in my charts because the official series household data is admitted garbage. Year-over-year household data comparisons are simply wrong.
When the BLS releases the full experimental details, I will update the lead chart.
Meanwhile, my lead chart, while the best anyone can do, is still inaccurate.
Monthly Job Report Details
- Nonfarm Payroll: -92,000 to 158,466,000 – Establishment Survey
- Civilian Non-institutional Population: +90,000 to 274,766,000
- Civilian Labor Force: +18,000 to 170,483,000 – Household Survey
- Participation Rate: -0.1 to 62.0% – Household Survey
- Employment:-185,000 to 162,912,000 – Household Survey
- Unemployment: +203,000 to 7,571,000 – Household Survey
- Baseline Unemployment Rate: +0.1 to 4.4% – Household Survey
- Not in Labor Force: +72,000 to 104,283,000 – Household Survey
- U-6 unemployment: -0.2 to 7.9% – Household Survey
To highlight the nonsense, last month the BLS reported the labor force at 171,882,00. This month the BLS reports the labor force rose by 18,000 to 170,483,000.
Last month the BLS reported employment rose was 164,520,000. This month the BLS says employment fell by 185,000 to 162,912,000.
Last month, employment was overstated by about 1.4 million +- more huge revisions.
Nonfarm Payrolls Change by Sector
Nonfarm Payrolls Change by Sector in Thousands
- Nonfarm Payrolls: -92
- Manufacturing: -12
- Construction: -11
- Leisure and Hospitality: -27
- Private Education and Health Care: -34
- Professional and Business Services: -5
- Information: -11
- Financial: +10
- Retail: +2
- Wholesale: +6
- Government: -6
Private education and health (demographic related) was impacted by strikes.
Monthly Revisions
- The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for December was revised down by 65,000, from +48,000 to -17,000.
- The change for January was revised down by 4,000, from +130,000 to +126,000.
- With these revisions, employment in December and January combined is 69,000 lower than previously reported.
Part-Time Jobs
- Involuntary Part-Time Work: -477,000 to 4,396,000
- Voluntary Part-Time Work: -171,000 to 22,728,000
- Total Full-Time Work: -100,000 to 134,341,000
- Total Part-Time Work: -249,000 to 28,478,000
- Multiple Job Holders: -352,000 to 8,371,000
The above numbers never total correctly due to the way the BLS makes seasonal adjustments. I list them as reported.
These numbers continue to be garbage.
Last month I reported full time work at 135,797,000, up by 582,000. This month it’s 134,341,000, a decline of only 100,000. Last month was overstated by about 1.4 million.
Hours and Wages
- Average weekly hours of all private employees rose by 0.1 at 34.3 hours.
- Average weekly hours of all private service-providing employees was flat at 33.2 hours.
- Average weekly hours of manufacturers rose 0.1 hours to 40.1 hours.
Hourly Earnings
This data is also frequently revised. Here are the numbers as reported this month.
Average Hourly Earnings of All Nonfarm Workers rose $0.15 to $37.32. A year ago the average wage was $35.94. That’s a gain of 3.7%.
Average hourly earnings of Production and Nonsupervisory Workers rose $0.09 to $32.03. A year ago the average wage was $30.79. That’s a gain of 3.7%.
Those gains are reportedly beating inflation. But that’s nonsense too because the CPI does not count property taxes or homeowners’ insurance in its calculations.
Unemployment Rate
Alternative Measures of Unemployment
Table A-15 is where one can find a better approximation of what the unemployment rate really is.
- The official unemployment rate is 4.4 percent.
- U-6 is much higher at 7.9 percent.
Both numbers would be way higher still, were it not for millions dropping out of the labor force over the past few years.
Some of those dropping out of the labor force retired because they wanted to retire. Some dropped out over Covid fears and never returned. Still others took advantage of a strong stock market and retired early.
The rest is disability fraud, forced retirement (need for Social Security income), and discouraged workers.
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.
Birth-Death Methodology Explained
I gave a detailed explanation of the model and why the usual calculation is wrong in my June 8, 2024 post How Much Did the BLS Birth-Death Adjustment Pad the May Jobs Report?
I repeat, do not subtract the birth-death number from the headline number.
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.
Negative Revisions
On September 9, 2025 I commented New QCEW Data Indicates More Big Negative Revisions Coming to Job Reports
The discrepancy between jobs reports and quarterly data widens again.
Sure enough. With the January 2026 report, the BLS revised nonfarm payrolls lower for last year by over 1 million jobs.
More negative revisions are coming.
Understanding the Enormous BLS Job Report Errors
For a full explanation of the lead chart, please see my December 18, 2025 post Understanding the Enormous BLS Job Report Errors, What Really Happened?
Four things: Immigration, Birth-Death Model, Response Rates, Sampling.
Incredibly Bad Standard Numbers
Many people are reporting unbelievable year-over-year numbers, then attributing the improvement to Trump.
For example, on the Benchmark adjusted chart, Employment in November 2025 was 163,741,000 and November of 2024 was 161,661,000. That’s supposedly a gain of 2.08 million.
But that entire gain occurred in January of 2025 when the BLS threw the whole adjustment into a single month.
Foreign-Born Employment Nonsense
The numbers in my charts are seasonally adjusted. Foreign born employment is not adjusted, compounding comparison errors.
And we have no BLS revised data for foreign born employment. So, all such foreign and US-born comparisons with BLS data remain garbage.
A second major problem with foreign-born employment is the BLS makes no distinction between US citizens who were foreign born and genuine foreign workers.
Final Thoughts
The annual benchmarks are posted but the experimental, far more accurate detail isn’t.
All the household data is flat out wrong.
Do not make month-over-month or year-over-year comparisons on household data.
The best series is the “experimental” data but the BLS is again delayed.
More Huge Negative Revisions Are Coming
Q: How do we know that?
A: For details, please see my February 27, 2026 post BLS Private Payrolls for 2025 Q2 Overstated by ~847,000
The Business Employment Dynamics report shows -321,000 vs Payroll report +526,000. Believe BED.
Those negative revisions will be on top of the negative revisions posted today.
Related Posts
February 11, 2026: BLS Revises Nonfarm Payrolls for 2025 Lower by 1 Million Jobs
For the second year, the BLS annual benchmark revision was hugely negative.
February 11, 2026: Another Look at the Incredible January 2026 Jobs Report
Do you believe the nonfarm payroll report for January 2026?
Should be “household data are garbage”
I’ve noticed there are several people at local businesses who have jobs. So far I have not seen a business that is completely without people with jobs. Even at self-service gas stations, they still have clerks inside. This jobs report is brought to you by my household, and it is not garbage.
I, too, have a job! All the people I work with have a job, except for the ones that got laid off, but I don’t work with them anymore, so I guess they don’t count.
Jobs everywhere ya look.
92,000 job losses? This can’t be right! America is on a winning streak, Dow is at 50,000…. I mean 47,000. We have the best economy in history!
Trump fired the last guy that gave a negative jobs report. Get ready for corrections to follow right after the new guy gets in. They must have meant 92,000 jobs created.
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.
“But perhaps the most important revision is that the entire boom in native-born employment was fake news: a statistical mirage spawned by some overzealous BLS staffer’s excel model.”
oh….oh, my….
Is it even possible to prove or verify a model in excel? Do these numbers ALL come from excel?
First of all there is a time lag in the factory investment cycle when it comes to employment plus the AI is causing less need to hire or keep white color manufacturing workers and a much less decline in blue color workers. The trend is firmly established. Nevertheless manufacturing investment is exploding. In all manufacturing employment may stagnate but output and profits will soar as productivity increases.
Can we see this data showing manufacturing investment “exploding”? The only thing I see exploding is the economy.
18 trillion plus the 78 trillion from last week is damn near 100 trillion.
There will be no data, or any response whatsoever.
… and a monkey just flew out my butt.
Given the level of surveillance today on so much of what we do, it is hard to believe there are not AI solutions to figure out how many people are working in a given moment in this country. But have noticed an interesting trend inn my small universe – super early retirements of men in their 50″s. Some as you said have hit the jackpot and why not use my wealth to do something fun while I m still healthy, in another case – it will be a challenge, but I am tired of the rat race. My spouse is retiring and I am joining in. At the same time we are still short of help up here. Better than it was but not great.
In my observations, people who had already hit the jackpot would carry on working to maximize their wealth or to acquire vacation homes. But those were the good times. I see people being laid off wholesale, with whole departments or product lines being eliminated, and most of those jackpot hitters affected by them won’t be looking for a new position, possibly taking a pay cut.
I’m not believing the 3.7% hourly earnings increase. If that’s accurate, then millions of workers have to be getting ‘huge’ raises to balance out the millions of people getting 2% or less raises.
yeah, but there’s a lot more US citizens getting jobs, and all the losses are illegal immigrants. right? right??
I wish I could report the necks on lawn crews are bright red, but no, they’re still Mexicans.
Is Trump going to rename the USS Missouri after himself and have an Unconditional Surrender Ceremony before the markets close?
What struck me the most was the labor participation rate. It dropped down to 62 which I think is an all time low (sans COVID). I think the boomer retirements, deportation and drop in population are all contributing factors.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART/
Some clowns cheer “less people” on but that’s not how a capitalist economy functions, it needs larger and larger consumption to function properly.
And now we’re going to have massive inflation because of oil and lack of labor.
Well its impossible for there to be larger and larger consumption in a finite world.
So either capitalism isn’t going to survive or it will be fine in an equilibrium (my vote in on the latter).
Money printer says “hold my single malt”
Money is not a requirement of Capitalism. You can have Capitalism in a barter system.
So you want to move to a barter system huh? Why don’t you just move to Amish country Tim?
I didn’t invent capitalism nor do I make the rules, this is simply how it works. I just profit from whatever system I am bound to at that moment in time.
Gotta have something tangible to barter, and most of us are only good at pushing little plastic buttons and attending meetings about what happened when you pushed the buttons, and what buttons you’re going to push next.
“I’ll push these buttons if you give me that quart of liquor” just isn’t much of a value proposition.
Free markets are flexible and adjust to reality. They don’t need an ever-growing population or ever-expanding consumption beyond what is organic. Of course, the US is so far removed from being a free-market economy that an American wouldn’t recognize one if it bit ’em in the ass.
(Drop in population and deportation would not lower labor force participation rate; they affect the denominator so as to raise the rate.)
But I hear the military is hiring.
Unfortunately they won’t let you bring your parents to basic training (yet).
Now that we may be loading boots into Iran, it occurs to me, why are the homophobes banning trans soldiers from war, when they could send THEM off to die instead of the coal-rolling MAGA patriots? They are fighting themselves on this one.
Shit, that is funny!
That’s generous, I felt a bit of a douche typing those words. But the truth can be inconvenient. Et tu, Al Gore?
Do muslims go to hell if killed by a transexual? Or maybe heaven, but the 72 virgins are all transexuals? This could strike real terror into the Iranian soldiers.
This is clearly an overlooked secret weapon in 21st century warfare.
Yeah, time to bring back “Rosie the Riveter”…..re-up those weapons stockpiles that aren’t depleted.
Gotta “bring are boys back home.”
Ugh