The U.S. economy added 911,000 fewer jobs over the 12 months ending in March than the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) initially reported, according to data released by the besieged agency Tuesday.
In a widely anticipated reevaluation of employment data, BLS said it likely over-reported the total number of jobs added by the U.S. since March 2024 by nearly 1 million, a 0.6 percent reduction and estimated to be the largest revision in history.
BLS issues monthly jobs reports based on two surveys — one of households, and another of businesses — which the agency uses to calculate job gains and overall employment levels.
BLS revises those individual reports in subsequent months as more survey responses come in, and additional data is available.
The agency also revises older employment data based on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which includes more accurate data about overall employment in the U.S.
The data released Tuesday is the BLS’s preliminary estimate of how many jobs were overstated by previous employment reports, based on the QCEW data.
Economists expected the BLS estimate to span anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million jobs.
Even so, the scale of the BLS’s estimated revision could draw even more ire from President Trump, who canned the head of the agency after baselessly claiming she was manipulating jobs data to serve the interests of Democrats.
“These preliminary estimates are consistent with other signs of slowing job growth in late 2024 and the beginning of 2025,” wrote economists Elise Gould and Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning nonprofit think tank.
“The bulk of these revisions reflect 2024 data—in fact, despite the predictable angst they will generate from the White House, today’s revisions tell us very little about the state of Trump’s economy since he wasn’t president in 2024.”
While the BLS data focuses largely on pre-Trump data, the report could boost pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by twice the standard amount at its upcoming policy meeting.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell had already opened the door to a September rate cut during a speech last month before the BLS released another brutal jobs report Friday, showing a paltry gain of 29,000 jobs in August.
The astonishingly low August employment gain coupled with the steep revision to previous data estimated by BLS paints the picture of a labor market under serious pressure.
“President Trump probably will weigh in, perhaps redoubling accusations that the BLS recently has been asleep at the wheel and that the Fed has been too slow to ease, though he equally could argue that the revisions tarnish his predecessor’s record,” wrote Samuel Tombs of Pantheon Macroeconomics in a research note previewing the report.
