There were 258,000 negative revisions in May and June.
Initial Thoughts
In May, the BLS reported 144,000 jobs. And in June the BLS reported 147,000 jobs.
I kept asking “Does anyone believe these reports?”
Today, the BLS says oops. Employment in May and June was a combined 258,000 lower than previously reported.
Job Report Details
- Nonfarm Payroll: +73,000 to 159,539,000 – Establishment Survey
- Civilian Non-institutional Population: +200,000 to 273,785,000
- Civilian Labor Force: -38,000 to 170,342,000 – Household Survey
- Participation Rate: -0.1 to 62.2% – Household Survey
- Employment:-260,000 to 163,106,000 – Household Survey
- Unemployment: +221,000 to 7,236,000 – Household Survey
- Baseline Unemployment Rate: +0.1 to 4.2% – Household Survey
- Not in Labor Force: +239,000 to 103,443,000 – Household Survey
- U-6 unemployment: +0.2 to 7.9% – Household Survey
Nonfarm Payrolls Change by Sector
Monthly Change in Nonfarm Payrolls
Monthly Revisions
- The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised down by 125,000, from +144,000 to +19,000
- The change for June was revised down by 133,000, from +147,000 to +14,000.
- With these revisions, employment in May and June combined is 258,000 lower than previously reported.
Part-Time Jobs
- Involuntary Part-Time Work: +219,000 to 4,684,000
- Voluntary Part-Time Work:+214,000 to 22,770,000
- Total Full-Time Work: -440,000 to 134,837,000
- Total Part-Time Work: +247,000 to 28,437,000
- Multiple Job Holders: -523,000 to 8,342,000
The above numbers never total correctly due to the way the BLS makes seasonal adjustments. I list them as reported.
Note that multiple job holders add to nonfarm payrolls but not the number of employed.
Hours and Wages
This data is frequently revised.
- Average weekly hours of all private employees rose by 0.1 hour to 34.3 hours.
- Average weekly hours of all private service-providing employees rose by 0.1 hours to 33.2 hours.
- Average weekly hours of manufacturers was steady at 40.1 hours.
An overall decline or rise of a tenth of an hour does not sound line much, but with employment over 160 million, it’s more significant than it appears at first glance.
However, in a falling employment setup, hours of the remaining employees tend to rise, at least initially.
Hourly Earnings
This data is also frequently revised. Here are the numbers as reported this month.
Average Hourly Earnings of All Nonfarm Workers rose $0.12 to $36.44. A year ago the average wage was $35.07. That’s a gain of 3.9%.
Average hourly earnings of Production and Nonsupervisory Workers rose $0.12 to $31.34. A year ago the average wage was $30.17. That’s a gain of 3.9%.
Unemployment Rate
The Unemployment Rate has been between 4.0 percent and 4.2 percent for 15 straight months.
Do we credit Biden, Trump, the Fed, or the BLS?
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 4.2 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 hype 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. That’s flawed.
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.
QCEW Report Shows Overstatement of Jobs
On June 16, I commented QCEW Report Shows Overstatement of Jobs by the BLS is Increasing
The discrepancy between QCEW and the BLS jobs report is rising.
Small Business Employment
Small businesses are the primary driver of jobs. According to ADP data small business employment has stalled.
And for employer sizes of 20-49 employees, growth is negative.
For discussion, please see post yesterday Another Weak ADP Payroll Report, Especially Small Businesses
ADP reported a gain of 104,000 private payrolls. Small businesses weak again.
At the press conference yesterday [Wednesday July 30], Powell kept referring to BLS jobs stats as if the labor marker was OK.
It was my one big disagreement with his press conference comments.
Final Thoughts
Last month I said “The BLS monthly data is total garbage. I do the best I can with BLS data.”
This month, I note the stench is so powerful that no one can pretend there is not a massive data collection sampling problem at the BLS.
I will do a detailed follow-up post on BLS issues soon.
Revelio Labs stepping in to fill the technology gap on BLS data. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ben-zweig_rpls-release-activity-7361050444149792771-ZZIg
I have been watching the attrition of some relatively high level managers and persons in the legal profession getting the boot as AI replaces their jobs. Also, a well known graphic artist closed his business in Chicago and let a number of employees go as AI has enabled his customers to create their own. He will have to re-invent himself while in his 50’s, not an envious position.
It is becoming clear that there is a shift in employment going on that favors lower skilled persons finding employment in menial tasks or factory work.
The huge problem we have is that our schools have produced myriads of debt laden persons with high earning expectations in a professional white collar setting that is not hiring…
The real growth industries are those with physical skills in mechanical/technical support, factory work or manual labor. Electricians are particularly supported by the structural trends of underlying employment.
Real estate professionals are challenged by a low turnover market and growing AI tools for lower commission transactions.
It is indeed a quickly evolving job market with significant skills imbalances relative to expectations.
NQ and ES red vol is growing. Support line: May 23 to June 23 lows. NQ closed on support. ES closed below it, inside July 3/7 BB: 6,333.25/ 6,246.25. Options:
1) ES cont higher to 6.6K or above. 2) Osc around Dec high to build a cause. 3) Breach July high.
Thanks for the stream of gibberish! Really enlightening!!
I’ve called for 3-month averaging across government statistics repeatedly in the past and do so again now. This would smooth out the noise and give more reliable, actionable numbers.
When you have massive revisions likes this, please rethink your smoothing and the three month prior smoothing. revised.
Faster QCEW data is the way to go.
Speaking of job losses:
New Study: California’s $20 Minimum Wage Killed 18,000 Restaurant Jobs
Wage floors destroy opportunities, harming the poor most of all. Californians just got a hard lesson in basic economics.
Peter Jacobsen
July 28, 2025
Perhaps the greatest example that good policymaking intentions go awry is the minimum wage. Proponents of increasing the minimum wage argue that doing so will help the poor.
If we could snap our fingers and make the poor suddenly rich, there would be no reason to object. Unfortunately, in a world of scarce resources, this is not a possibility. The minimum wage actually tends to make many poor workers worse off and increases unemployment. A recent study on California minimum wage increases demonstrates that fact (yet again).
Professors Jeffrey Clemens, Jonathan Meer, and Olivia Edwards recently put out a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) that demonstrates some adverse effects of minimum wage laws.
The paper covers California’s 2023 law, which enacted a $20 minimum wage for restaurants that had at least 60 locations in the US. This was a significant increase from the fast food minimum wage for California, which had been $16 (though some localities had higher minimum wages). They examine the impact of the law on employment and find:
Fast food employment in California had declined by 2.64 percent, whereas employment in non-minimum-wage-intensive industries had increased by 0.58 percent. This contrasts with the rest of the United States, where fast food restaurant employment had increased marginally while employment in all non-minimum-wage-intensive industries had risen by one percent.
…
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/new-study-californias-20-minimum-wage-killed-18000-restaurant-jobs/
If Gavin will raise the min wage to $30 there will be less obesity.
Job numbers are no longer a useful measure of the health of any 1st world economy because AI is taking away more jobs every month on what is sure to shortly become an exponential curve.
Getting Washington DC and Wall Street to recognize and accept this is going to be like pulling teeth!
The real constant the administration demands is scapegoats: Powell still serves the purpose, and this bureaucrat.
Dear Leader doesn’t like being inconvenienced by the consequences of his incompetence. So he’s firing the person who put together today’s jobs numbers. They will be replaced by a MAGA apparatchik who will cook up imaginary numbers more to the glory of Dear Leader.
I do wonder if any of the somewhat more reality oriented people in the administration will be able to persuade the president that just because you change the numbers doesn’t mean you’ve changed the underlying reality.
Trump cares not for your reality-based observations
Critical thinking REQUIRES getting rid of your personal biases and having an open mind.
Industry is going to transform very quickly. Those who are not drafted into war will be building military equipment. People won’t have time for consumerism while working 10+ hour days.
what’s the different between being fully committed to ev and fully committed to AI, spending $300B on AI infrastructure in 2025 alone. The honeymoon with AI might soon be over. They need a digital test of their ass.
MIT published a recent study on AI and intelligence. My takeaway: the less you THINK, the lower you IQ.
AI reads your question, reads 100/200 articles and writes an answer in
less than a sec. AI can provide a lot of data to explore, but don’t let AI think for u.
Oh, but it did ‘think.’ You don’t know what it left out.
Zuck yesterday: “If you don’t have my AI glasses you’re at a cognitive deficit” what a toad
I do believe this captures the very essence of modern society. It is nuanced and the comparison may seem nonlinear so pay strict attention. Every distraction TPTB pulls.
Monty Python ScriptsDead ParrotThe cast:MR. PRALINE
John Cleese
SHOP OWNER
Michael Palin
The sketch:A customer enters a pet shop.
Mr. Praline: ‘Ello, I wish to register a complaint.
(The owner does not respond.)
Mr. Praline: ‘Ello, Miss?
Owner: What do you mean “miss”?
Mr. Praline: (pause)I’m sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
Owner: We’re closin’ for lunch.
Mr. Praline: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue…What’s,uh…What’s wrong with it?
Mr. Praline: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, my lad. ‘E’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it!
Owner: No, no, ‘e’s uh,…he’s resting.
Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.
Owner: No no he’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn’it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
Mr. Praline: The plumage don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead.
Owner: Nononono, no, no! ‘E’s resting!
Mr. Praline: All right then, if he’s restin’, I’ll wake him up! (shouting at the cage) ‘Ello, Mister Polly Parrot! I’ve got a lovely fresh cuttle fish for you if you show…
(owner hits the cage)
Owner: There, he moved!
Mr. Praline: No, he didn’t, that was you hitting the cage!
Owner: I never!!
Mr. Praline: Yes, you did!
Owner: I never, never did anything…
Mr. Praline: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) ‘ELLO POLLY!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o’clock alarm call!
(Takes parrot out of the cage and thumps its head on the counter. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)
Mr. Praline: Now that’s what I call a dead parrot.
Owner: No, no…..No, ‘e’s stunned!
Mr. Praline: STUNNED?!?
Owner: Yeah! You stunned him, just as he was wakin’ up! Norwegian Blues stun easily, major.
Mr. Praline: Um…now look…now look, mate, I’ve definitely ‘ad enough of this. That parrot is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not ‘alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein’ tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk.
Owner: Well, he’s…he’s, ah…probably pining for the fjords.
Mr. Praline: PININ’ for the FJORDS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he fall flat on his back the moment I got ‘im home?
Owner: The Norwegian Blue prefers keepin’ on it’s back! Remarkable bird, id’nit, squire? Lovely plumage!
Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining that parrot when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its perch in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.
(pause)
Owner: Well, o’course it was nailed there! If I hadn’t nailed that bird down, it would have nuzzled up to those bars, bent ’em apart with its beak, and VOOM! Feeweeweewee!
Mr. Praline: “VOOM”?!? Mate, this bird wouldn’t “voom” if you put four million volts through it! ‘E’s bleedin’ demised!
Owner: No no! ‘E’s pining!
Mr. Praline: ‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
(pause)
Owner: Well, I’d better replace it, then. (he takes a quick peek behind the counter) Sorry squire, I’ve had a look ’round the back of the shop, and uh, we’re right out of parrots.
Mr. Praline: I see. I see, I get the picture.
Owner: (pause) I got a slug.
(pause)
Mr. Praline: Pray, does it talk?
Owner: Nnnnot really.
Mr. Praline: WELL IT’S HARDLY A BLOODY REPLACEMENT, IS IT?!!???!!?
Owner: N-no, I guess not. (gets ashamed, looks at his feet)
Mr. Praline: Well.
(pause)
Owner: (quietly) D’you…. d’you want to come back to my place?
Mr. Praline: (looks around) Yeah, all right, sure.
Alternate ending:Mr. Praline: (sweet as sugar) Pray, does it talk?
Owner: Nnnnot really.
Mr. Praline: WELL IT’S HARDLY A BLOODY REPLACEMENT, IS IT?!!???!!?
Owner: Look, if you go to my brother’s pet shop in Bolton, he’ll replace the parrot for you.
Mr. Praline: Bolton, eh? Very well.
(The customer leaves.)
(The customer enters the same pet shop. The owner is putting on a false moustache.)
Mr. Praline: This is Bolton, is it?
Owner: (with a fake mustache) No, it’s Ipswitch.
Mr. Praline: (looking at the camera) That’s inter-city rail for you.
(Mr. Praine goes to the train station. He addresses a man standing behind a desk marked “Complaints”.)
Mr. Praline: I wish to complain, British-Railways Person.
Attendant: I DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS JOB, YOU KNOW!!!
Mr. Praline: I beg your pardon…?
Attendant: I’m a qualified brain surgeon! I only do this job because I like being my own boss!
Mr. Praline: Excuse me, this is irrelevant, isn’t it?
Attendant: Yeah, well it’s not easy to pad these python files out to 150 lines, you know.
Mr. Praline: Well, I wish to complain. I got on the Bolton train and found myself deposited here in Ipswitch.
Attendant: No, this is Bolton.
Mr. Praline: (to the camera) The pet shop man’s brother was lying!!
Attendant: Can’t blame British Rail for that.
Mr. Praline: In that case, I shall return to the pet shop!
He does.
Mr. Praline: I understand this IS Bolton.
Owner: (still with the fake mustache) Yes?
Mr. Praline: You told me it was Ipswitch!
Owner: …It was a pun.
Mr. Praline: (pause) A PUN?!?
Owner: No, no…not a pun…What’s that thing that spells the same backwards as forwards?
Mr. Praline: (Long pause) A palindrome…?
Owner: Yeah, that’s it!
Mr. Praline: It’s not a palindrome! The palindrome of “Bolton” would be “Notlob”!! It don’t work!!
Owner: Well, what do you want?
Mr. Praline: I’m not prepared to pursue my line of inquiry any longer as I think this is getting too silly!
Sergeant-Major: Quite agree, quite agree, too silly, far too silly… (takes customer by the arm) Come on, you, you’ve got to go do another sketch now! Come on… (he walks off stage left, followed by the director and cameramen, leaving the owner alone on the set)
Owner: (to the audience) Well! I never wanted to do this in the first place. I wanted to be… a lumberjack!
(he takes off his white lab coat to reveal a checkered shirt and suspenders under it)
Floating down the mighty rivers of British Columbia! With my best girl by my side!…
Sketch continues into the Lumberjack Song.
Awesome!! So far, only five down votes for some of the funniest British dialog I’ve read in a long while. Of course, the Brits don’t have much to be funny about, nowadays.
kill these lengthy comments
Further qualification – “dumb” lengthy comments
Sense of humor = 0.0
take it to some comedy blog
From ZH.I do enjoy the total insanity coming from almost every BIGOV/BIGBUS mouth.
“No One Can Be That Wrong” – Trump Fires Labor Statistics Boss After “RIGGED” Jobs Data
Update (1600ET): President Trump was not done yet and posted again calling today’s jobs data “rigged”
Remember, there’s no such thing as a coincidence in DC.
I’m chewing on some of Hillary’s baby pizza right now, sucker
I dont know how much longer we can handle all this winning!
US Manufacturing Contracts at Fastest Pace in Nine Months
it would’ve happened sooner, but for Covid cash.
Mish, as usual your numbers are all excellently accurate. However, every extant economic theory from libertarianism to socialism is flawed and their attempts to resolve the problems of modern economies come to nothing because they fail to perceive the deepest problem thereof which is the monopolistic paradigm concept which private banking wields, namely Debt Only as the sole form and vehicle for the creation and distribution of new money. Break up that monopoly paradigm by strategically integrating the new paradigm of Monetary Gifting into the economic process and the problems of chronic inflation, chronic austerity of individual demand and hence austerity of free and clear money to purchase every enterprise’s goods and services and a host of additional benefits will be possible. The last monopoly paradigm we had to deal with was Salvation Via Roman Catholic Sacraments ONLY and that lead to The Reformation. We require a monetary reformation.
I wonder if you might gift me a vacation house, somewhere nice, please? I’d be very thankful, at least for a while. Also, the appliances should be new.
Very funny, but thats not what I’m doing (gifting the total price of a vacation home)…only three quarters of the price and yet every commercial agent gets its full price so there’s no moral hazard involved. Sneering is always an indicator of someone with ego involvement in an old and invalidated orthodoxy.
Payroll disaster? ? ?
Trump found the culprit.
Trump fires commissioner of labor statistics after weaker-than-expected jobs figures slam markets
Economy is strong.
Be careful with your statistics or else.
The Russian Nobel Prize winner, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, summed it up nicely:
“We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.”
Welcome to MAGA-USSR
I ask again, got exit strategy?
“We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.”
The phrase was originally intended vice-versa. The workers did work. The paymaster paid them, with phoney currency. So good statistics on paying “good” money to the workers, but there was not much to buy with it. Eventually the workers wised up and scaled their work accordingly. “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
1W NVDA: buying tail, before selling tail cancel each other. No close > July 14 high.
on the next new moon, i will short spx and go long weed, booze and fentanyl.
Maybe you should share yours?
No worries, fired commissioner will be replaced by tRump toady, all will be beautiful.
86/47
Dovetails wonderfully with the shutdown of research and news sources. I never saw the like of it (in the USA), particularly in non-war years.
I notice meanwhile, on supposedly totally unrelated sites, a huge surge in postings bickering (mostly irrelevantly, bitterly and fact-free) about Trump, attacking and defending.
Excellent question Mish. I was under the impression from the MAGA commenters that we are in a new golden age empowered by trillions in tariff revenue that was paid & eaten by other countries or corporations and didn’t cause inflation. Strange that core PCE moved up though.
Despite knowing that central planning doesn’t work and never has somehow Trump knows the special magic sauce to central plan his way to an amazing economy. Trump better hurry up on that golden age, only 1267 days left in his administration.
This all begs a question: Got exit strategy?
Trump has 1300 days to get rid of the largest pathogens and smaller viruses, before moving up.
Business cycles occur regardless of politics. Yes, there are a few ways to prime the pump, but at best they result in delay and reduced amplitude–and in the long run may make peaks and valleys far worse.
In a ‘we-want-it-now’ society… well, our personal biases get in the way, and we look for scapegoats… The only important question is how bad does it get given ‘globality.’
Pay attention and you will hear Democrats saying that Biden (like Obama before him) was having a great economy, and Trump has now ruined it.
Mish to BLS
That would be a poisoned chalice, though.
congrats Mike, for a long time you’ve been pointing out the unrealistic job #’s resulting in annual revisions. Is it feb 26, that we’ll see the total fake # of job creation.
Time to fire Biden appointees from the BLS. Fire them all.
Happy numbers! WE DEMAND HAPPY NUMBERS!
All in good time, comrade…
Nine down votes. Awesome job! The best thing about firing government employees is……
a) a net increase in productivity
b) more overtime for those who remain
c) long term saving in gov. pensions
d) the message it sends to other employees.
a)
The increase in productivity occurs in the private sector
CLASSIC Shoot the messenger BS!
“I was just informed that our Country’s “Jobs Numbers” are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory.”
Sure, cut staf numbers and it effects nothing – NOT!
Go ahead, bring in a rookie and it’ll be better. Dillusional Don.
It’s being reported that Trump is moving to fire Dr. Erika McEntarfer.
Don’t get the results you want….just fire everyone and install “yes” people that will report the numbers you want.
Banana Republic……
Done:
Trump fires a senior official over jobs numbers | CNN Business
Problem solved.
You had me at “Dr”
It’s not as if the BLS had a stellar record under her tenure.
Who can forget the massive 818K downward revision in March 2024?
And you act as if it’s completely impossible that she’s misrepresenting the numbers which is utterly hilarious. While I’m not saying she’s guilty, neither am I going to ignore the fact that it’s well within the realm of Biden appointees to do things to sabotage Trump’s administration / policies.
People on this site complain all the time about how unbelievable the numbers are that come out of the BLS.
And might I point out that week jobs numbers, if fudged, would help push the Fed to lower interest rates, which is exactly what Trump wants. So in this sense, he’s going against his demands to cut rates.
Don’t you love it when thoughtful comments get down-voted. Maybe it is time to find a blog with critical thinkers, besides the guy at the top.
That’s exactly right. Critical thinking has been replaced by blind hatred.
Fire everyone. Create a Facebook group to guess employment numbers. Problem solved.
It is always better to reward incompetence. That way the competent people go elsewhere and no one is left to criticize bad performance.
The monthly job numbers under Biden proved to be nothing but worthless crap. I’d venture to say that they were purposely manipulated higher to make Biden look competent only to be revised downard with each monthly revision and than dramatically when the QCEW and BED reports were released 6 months or so down the road. When I saw the revisions this morning, I called bullshit on them too. There were near constant downward revisions for literally every economic report under Biden, including the monthly jobs data, but none of them were even remotely as crazeh as these monthly revisions. If the BLS is this bad at estimating monthly job numbers, everyone in that department needs to be fired. There is no dang way they were that off and I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I swear the numbers are being manipulated again. If not, than theTrump needs to fire everyone at the BLS and hire more competent people.
Trump will never hire competent people. He only hires toadies.
86/47
ZeroHedge:
Also from ZeroHedge:
ZeroHedge:
This is complete nonsense. You are comparing unrevised June with July … and foreign-born and illegal aliens are two completely different groups; and if you would know something about the household survey, you would know that illegal aliens are pretty unlikely participants in the household survey.
I’m not doing anything. These articles are directly from “Tyler Durden” on ZeroHedge, not third party commentators. Take it up with “Tyler”(s), not me. PS Betting against the actual “Tyler”(s) is a fool’s errand. They usually nail the data analysis, and are almost always one step ahead.
Good call (by Mish) in real time. And the collapse in employment figures is clearly correlated with Liberation Day in April and the chaotic tariff policies that followed in May and June. No sane business can invest and hire with any confidence in that environment.
These wide revisions make the figures meaningless. There has got to be a better way to make these measurements especially now with AI.
Walmart is one of the largest employers in almost every state. The fact they are cutting jobs isn’t a good sign.
https://talkbusiness.net/2025/07/walmart-again-cutting-hundreds-of-corporate-jobs/
But I’ve long wondered why not count employment through FICA taxes at the social security office. A drop in FICA remittances (number count) means jobs are down, an uptick means jobs are up. I don’t get it, seems simple enough.
Walmart is not that good of a proxy since it captures the low to medium income levels. It’s discount model can give contrary indications as when sales rise during hard times and because people have less money to spend and go to Walmart instead of someplace better. On the other hand if times are good people have more money and shop at better places.
Walmart is a great proxy when you compare it ‘high-end’ retailers.
correct. used to be some hedge fund long ago that reported the FICA. i cannot recall the outfit name.
I agree 100% but for what should be the obvious reason. Let’s zoom in on this statement:
“The positions being eliminated are in the around 200 Walmart academies and the more than 40 states where market managers are located.”
As MSFT becomes the 2nd $4T company along with NVidia, what’s the common thread between these two companies?
That’s right! AI Say it again, AI. Say it one more time!!! AI
Who the hell in 2025 needs market managers when you’ve got MSFT & NVidia selling tons of AI-based systems & technologies?
And the hilarious part is that all these CEOs are going to get away with these stealth cuts for years before anyone finally wises up.
I’m going to borrow and slightly amend a saying that Bitcoin cultists use anytime someone has a negative critique of Bitcoin.
Any time there is negative economic news under Trump you can simply reply to non-believers that “Tariffs solve this!!!” Then, if you like, you can provide a convoluted explanation as to how tariffs will create jobs.
I loved the popular easy, cheap bumper-sticker catcalls from crypto maximalists: FUD, FOMO, HODL, and “enjoy being poor!” I’m sure we will see a new crop of those.
Interest rates should have been cut 2 months ago. Trump is right about Powell, he’s always late.
The bond market doesn’t care what JPow does.
Bessent’s solution, I believe, is to arm-wrestle rates down, by whatever means, and then borrow in that shorter window. That might permit obfuscation through the midterms?
Oh yes it does.
When he cuts rates, the long end of the yield curve pukes violently.
We should also ponder, are the big revisions due to cuts in BLS affecting the sampling process &/or data?
B/e if so than these big revisions may start to ‘wag the dog’ [market] more going forward. (I.e. Big revisions become more normalized.)
I’m of the opinion that the broadbased CPI (next week) could – will – be affected by staffing issues, and likewise may have much larger volatility as samples and sample sizes ebb and flow in accuracy from staff hits.
We’ll see, but I’m betting one way or another next weeks CPI is much worse.
Looking at our situation over the long term, in the 60’s we had guns and butter that the country could not afford. As a result of the excess spending and fixed gold rate supplying the disciple to both monetary and fiscal policy indicating the over-spending problem, Nixon via executive order, removed the gold tie to the dollar. Gold was fixed at $35 per ounce and now for sake of round numbers is around $3500 per ounce suggesting that the dollar has lost 99% of its value over that time frame. Remember the dollar is what we use to measure all things economic, and it needs to be stable to be meaningful over time not depreciated at 2% per year. Inflation was all the way up to roughly 4% when price controls were put in place in the early 70’s, which did not work. Around 1980 inflation was enough of a problem that the Volker fed raised rates to near 20% to tame it. During the following 40 years any problem, real or perceived, was met with an interest rate cut. As a result, the US economy has been inflated to a massive bubble on debt and deficit spending. One nasty long-term feature of debt is it brings forward economic activity, no one borrows money today to buy a car next year. Part of the painful economic repair we will go through is sorting out all the economic activity that has been brought forward.
Potentially the recent less than stellar economic reporting, even with all the questions about its veracity and highlighted by today’s employment report, is that we might have enough data to call the end of the artificial boom, the pricking of the bubble. It is coming sooner or later, and short-sighted policy to patch over problems in the short term only make the ultimate sorting more painful.
Cutting interest rates now is one of those can kicking fixes that makes things a little better now but worse in the future. As painful as it may be, the fix is for government to spend less than it takes in, pay down the debt and thereby remove the anvil around the country’s figurative neck.
Gold is not a measure of inflation. It’s price is a function of supply and demand only.
golds PRICE in fiat currencies is a reflection of the confidence in that currency and its related political systems. Golds VALUE remain unchanged as a store of value
Gold is a measure of faith in the Fed
GOLD has been money for 5000 years minimum. all the rest are mere currencies. the fed is a flash in the pan modern version of clipping coins to keep the kings and queens and harems in high cotton. the rest is eyewash.
Partially true – when government, monetary and fiscal policy are so poorly managed, demand for gold tends to rise greatly.
re: “1980 inflation was enough of a problem that the Volker fed raised rates to near 20% to tame it.”
Volcker implemented reserve requirements against NOW accounts in April 1981. That stopped inflation.
I was unable to find the size of NOW account balances nationwide at the time, but I doubt if regulated to the point of extinction, they would be sufficient to materially influence the inflation problem, at least not like raising interest rates on the lending side of the economy. Maybe you can provide more insight.
both things helped to tame the perceived currency debasement. or what the modern kids call inflation.
But that “fix” doesn’t fit the top dog’s vision of soaring headline market numbers.
There were 258,000 negative revisions in May and June.
In May, and in June, The BLS Data was wrong yet again. This is nothing new
– I kept asking “Does anyone believe these reports?” > Spot On!!
– Today, the BLS says oops. Employment is lower than previously reported. > Is anyone seriously surprised?
– The Unemployment Rate has been between 4.0 percent and 4.2 percent for 15 straight months. > So we break out of it a few Months before the Mid-Terms, and with a “Strong Outlook Ahead” Just a hunch…
No tradeoff between inflation and employment.
I’m curious how often we see revisions this large this quickly. These seem like enormous changes to data that was just reported. Also wonder where the revisions were made and why? Was it certain industries?
It’s simple: We’re being lied to to prop up President Cheeto Pedo’s moronic tariff thrashing.
and we are propping him up with a negative report and negative revisions? What did Robert Downey Junior say in Tropic Thunder? Something about never go full ….
…retard
I may be a ‘tard, but at least I’m not a pedophile supporter.
How can you be sure?
Did you vote for Clinton back in the day?
No one has any idea who else political wise might be in these files. Could be lots of political figures at the state and local levels and even if not in these files it’s highly likely at some point you’ve supported a scum bag at some level.
No, I did not vote for Clinton. I voted for Ron Paul.
Stop with the whataboutism.
Pedopheilia support is pedophelia support.
Did you vote for trump? How many times. This isn’t new info… it just finally caught on because Elon pushed it.
odds of priests and cardinal or two in those epstein video archives are strong odds.
You didn’t get the reference did you? You never saw Tropic Thunder? It’s one it the movie’s famous lines. You must live under a rock somewhere outside of regular society to have missed that movie.
Don’t divert. You support a pedo, with great enthusiasm. You belong under a rock with all the other slimy creepy things.
PEDOTUS TRUMP IS A CULT LEADER AND WHEN HE’S DEAD A FIGUREHEAD OF A RELIGION. PLEASE BOW YOUR HEAD AND PRAY. LORD HERE OUR PEDERAST PRESIDENT
You’re on to something… trump says he’s gonna fire the labor statistics chief.
Wonder what all went on there? Did the guy get sick of lying?
Of course I’m on to something. Thats what happens when you don’t view the entire world through an insanely warped partisan lens. You think clearly.
Soo.. what do you think of trump suddenly deciding to fire the person in charge of these numbers?
What could that possibly imply?
Hmmm… it’s a puzzle…
He didn’t like the numbers so lacking any self control he threw a fit and fired her.
There it is.
you understand low employment numbers are great for fed to lower rates. so yes.
AI is making some jobs end for humans. This is really going to be a net negative for jobs overall . Governments are left with the problems of unemployed citizens. People couldn’t keep up with technology before AI. It is going to be 10x worse and a lot quicker job losses by 2028. At some point I believe we will get someone a lot worse than Trump.
2028? Try much sooner. attorneys are already having stuff tossed out of court because of AI created flaws.
Kind of to amplify this, Microsoft fired 9k workers but hired 7k H1B workers.
Someone else pointed out that the illegal workers are not counted in employment/unemployment.
then there is
“The official unemployment rate does not directly include the long-term unemployed (those out of work for 27 weeks or more) in its calculation. While the long-term unemployed are considered part of the labor force if they are actively looking for work, the unemployment rate focuses on those actively searching for a job within the past four weeks. Therefore, someone who has been unemployed for a long period but has not actively looked for work in the last four weeks is not counted in the standard unemployment figures. ”
After watching decades of monthly stats that come in high then are revised much lower months later what is the significance except to give false hope to investors who will then lose money.
It is kind of fun to watch the seesaw and commenters who compare “today” to multiple decades past. As if the base factors have not devolved into some horrible stinking pit of debt and BIGOV/BIGBUS lies.
Back to AI a minute, how stupid did calculators make people? What about slide rules? Now everyone carries this massive computing force in their pocket merely to post on social media or take selfies of gang beat downs.
If they AI user is dumber than the AI, as if that is not possible, how does the AI usage benefit the user?
I read a compilation of short stories I think by Asimov. In it he talked about being paid by the word and editors like Gernsback would advise him to tighten up the stories.
Those type of editors lived until maybe the early 1980’s.
Quality not found today.
If modern writers and editors have no quality and they get paid for it, how does AI benefit them and more importantly ME?
If you didn’t bother to consider the benefit myself question previously then it is definitely limited to benefit ME.
Kind of an obvious one here, but AI can hypothetically churn through tens of thousands of pages of medical journals far faster than a human can read and retain.
So a doctor can enter in your symptoms and AI can perform a diagnosis, which the doctor can utilize in your treatments.
I think that directly benefits you.
Meta analysis, sure but not just yet.
On ZH a posting Microbiologist talked about some kid who fell over playing Basketball and hit his head.
Suffered ever increasing problems similar to head injury issues.
Eventually they discovered he had a viral spinal infection, by then the symptoms had gotten to the point he was in a wheel chair and blind.
AI finds symptoms of one thing but the reality is many things have similar symptoms.
Doctors, even now, are too stupid to see anything other than the most obvious.
When we hit Star Trek level or Polity level med treatment then I will feel safe.
I forgot to add how writing ruined people. Gurdjieff stated his father could recite 20k verses of the Gilgamesh ballad.
Every innovation we lose something.
AI has been around forever and was invented by the doctors i believe long long ago. it’s for sure more potent and efficient now. but in the 1980s at NASA we were using AI for landsat satellite data interpretation depending on what filters we were looking for. whales in oceans or marijuana fields in CA or license plates in kremlin…………
Even U-6 understates the problem massively. It would be interesting to see a breakdown between citizens/pemanent residents vs those here on so called temporary visas.
Mish you should not rule out that the “massive data sampling problem” is by political directive (at least this one). What better way to try to force the FOMC’s hands then to make huge downward revisions?
Maybe, but it’s hardly a good look for an ego driven administration to have such terrible numbers. People have been arguing data is cooked since forever, but those assertions are also frequently driven by rhetorical necessity. Someone on the left could argue manipulated no matter what the data was.
Good is manipulated to make Trump look good
Bad is manipulated to get rate cuts,
Clearly not by political directive. Trump just fired the head of data responsible.
Heaven help us all, now we’re going to have to trust Trump’s word on what the jobs data is.
“Jobs are up again, bigly, the best anyone has ever seen. They told me, ‘Sir, we’ve never seen numbers like this.’”
Stalin had the subtlety to set up a situation like this, AND have the messenger shot. That may be turning too many corners for Trump’s brain chip, but I wouldn’t put it past him if he could figure it out.
we have the hottest country in world history. 100% employent. the women are strong and the men all good looking……….
Some good news …
As inflation expectations decline, University of Michigan sentiment reaches a five-month high.
Sadly, health care is now the largest eomplyer.
(Think of it like a repair and maintanence company expense. Sure it’s needed, but it otherwise is not a productive spend.)
And healthcare needs to take a big pay cut.
That depends. My community has devolved from factory to healthcare.
My son worked third shift caring for people who could die any minute and those disabled that family either died out or aged out or just could not care for.
It ruined him mentally.
On the other hand there was the aid caught twerking on vegetative clients and posting it on social media.
My ex gf worked at a home and one of the other workers was caught stealing from a clients room. They did a back ground check and found she was banned from health care aid work in her home sate for theft. She was never fired.
That was a management decision.
Quality health care is a coin toss or as the old Nazi work camp quote goes, some guards were good, some were bad and some were just doing their job.
The (Lap) Dancing Nurses – Our Healthcare Heroes! The patients going out like Edward G. Robinson in Soylent Green, except with Happy Endings.
I agree with Pharmaceutical’s but many parts (elderly care) are desperately needed as well. This is now rolled up into “Healthcare” and not getting the attention, or resources it used to get, IMO.
Of course so has managed care (old “PA” did so) in general, so it’s simply come to look like the rest of care in a sense… unmanaged, and hence chaotic at times in all areas (Who Pays is very ambiguous).
Medicaid cuts mean millions of households get to care for mom and dad.
SIGNS of very wealthy empires, when healthcare is a huge employer. of course, the cost in amerika is twice europe and thrice japan. as amerikans are assholes for the most part. democracy works. assholes elect themselves. since republic of plato was penned.
There are worse foci for an economy than healthcare. Presumably there are spinoffs. Government spending (often coupled with private actors) brought us much of railroads, commercial flight, highways, telecom, the Internet, atomic energy ….
government investing in infrastructure like above, plus school K through university, all pay dividends for generations. and like the old canal and RR…..infrastructure when US colonies were dirt poor and euro venture capitalists lent dough in stuff tthat paid back inerest or dividends. stuff like endless warfare and dumb bankers bailouts and grifters like trump biden obama clinton bush crime families are unhealthy and will precipitate an empire to collapse under idiotic debt and currency debasement.
Isn’t people losing their jobs supposed to be good for the stock market?
Yes and it is good for the poverty homeless business model as well.
What is the alternative solution to bogus government stats on inflation and unemployment, among others?
Hooker rates.
The more people you have the cheaper sex is.
That should be the most important metric for the US street meat rates.
Two down voters paid too much for the street meat instead of going one block over?
Is our new Wilbur the old Fast Eddie reincarnated? The post tone is the same. Let’s see if we can get some peak oil posts.
QCEW data is damn good.
I have suggested for two years that we use it.