As a data scientist it is very frustrating to see a consistent lack of error bars on these numbers or any discussion about the magnitude of uncertainty around them by all news reports every time these numbers get released
If honest, the error bars would be so large as to make drawing conclusions from these numbers seem pointless. Certainly, both jobs growth and jobs loss are within the CI.
What's actually being tracked by people using this data is the delta from previous years -- which, conditioning on the same collection methodology etc -- is more reliable.
Not in their primary news release. A footnote says it is "generally conducted at the 90% interval", but the individual numbers do not have their actual computed error bars.
Yes, they do publish them, but it is disappointing their primary releases do not have them.
As a physicist, I always shed a tear when looking at data without error bars.
As a data scientist/generic programmer now, I don't really see them anywhere. I remember a colleague during my postdoc saying 'don't worry, no error bars in industry' when I asked about regression with ML lol
Our fake economy needs even more fake certainty now. They are all hiding from the obvious issue of stagflation because it is the most difficult economic problem to solve. The Fed know this which is why they did nothing with rates.
The numbers are as good as they can get with hard manual work that goes into compiling them.
The problem is that small businesses lag by 1-2 months reporting them, so the initial number being reported is almost always irrelevant, as it mostly applies to numbers coming out of larger corporations.
I would say the initial numbers should be embargoed until the number is reliable. People don’t understand error bars and reporting can more easily manipulate the current situation without outright lying.
That’s what I meant. There should be error bars to reflect uncertainty of the inherent data, but they should wait until all the data that could change things comes in rather than using projections which always drastically change
What decisions are so important and time sensitive they depend on these numbers right after a month is over? And also we at one point were making decisions without these numbers yet the quality of the decision making isn’t clearly improved.
That's true for the establishment survey, but the population survey, where they contact individuals, is what is actually used to calculate these numbers.
It is literally calling/writing 60,000 people and asking "are you employed? did you look for a job? Etc."
"How the government calculates unemployment" [0]
| Does anyone in this household have a business or a farm?
| Last week, did you do any work for (either) pay (or profit)?
| If the answer to question 1 is "yes" and the answer to question 2 is "no," the next question is:
| Last week, did you do any unpaid work in the family business or farm?
| For those who reply "no" to both questions 2 and 3, the next key questions used to determine employment status are:
| Last week, (in addition to the business) did you have a job, either full or part time? Include any job from which you were temporarily absent.
| Last week, were you on layoff from a job?
| What was the main reason you were absent from work last week?
| For those who respond "yes" to question 5 about being on layoff, the following questions are asked:
You have to wonder, since they are doing two different surveys trying to measure the same reality, which one more accurately measures the facts on the ground? Asking businesses how many people they are employing, or asking households whether or not their folks are working? The numbers don't really match up between the two.
What makes you think it's small businesses? I would assume most businesses doing any reporting at all are using a payroll system. Mine handles the reporting automatically. The kinds of payroll systems used by small businesses can be set up in a day. If anything, small businesses that make even a small effort to stay on top of things have an easier time than big ones with complicated systems and processes.
I think you say “as good as they can get with [the] hard manual work that goes into compiling them” as a way to respect the challenge of the BLS and say they’re doing the best with their resources, but it’s worth pointing out they could be better with more resources.
DOGE hurt them pretty hard: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics posted a notice on Wednesday stating that it stopped collecting data in three not-so-small cities (Lincoln, Nebraska; Buffalo, New York; and Provo, Utah) and increased “imputations” for certain items"
That looking at monthly numbers is stupid? The US has had significantly more job growth in 2026 than Canada has. The July numbers are convergence to a roughly common mean.
It is stupid. But the connection is that the Americans do international politics in an abusive way now. There is a very real possibility that their leader will see domestic bad number and foreign good number and throw a fit and look for something or someone to beat on. By all means, someone please tell him that looking at the numbers is stupid.
In particular, the Americans have been throwing endless tantrums Canada's way. This week we're "nasty people" because we refuse to become an ecnomimc vassal state. I'm sure we'll hear more tariff sabre rattling from the Americans soon.
It's tough to trust job openings. It is a fact that some number of job postings are ghost jobs that don't exist. Either they're scams from impersonators or the companies are trying to keep a good public face, but many openings sit for MONTHS which just does not line up with the anecdotal evidence of people going 6-12 months without an interview much less an offer
> The BLS said employment contracted the most in “local government education,” which declined by 50,000 roles, likely reflecting teachers during summer break.
This is not entirely accurate. AFAIK, teachers usually remain on payroll throughout the summer. This stat _might_ be talking about contractual teaching roles, like adjuncts or subs, but it's hard to say from that BLS category.
Not to mention, if it's seasonal for any reason then it's something that should be baked into the cyclical expectations already.
It's like reporting that Spirit of Halloween employees accounted for the biggest retailer layoffs in November. It's a totally useless statistic that tells you nothing about what might really be going on that month that's abnormal compared to baseline.
This is correct, teachers don't just stop getting paid and lose all benefits every summer (my best friend is a teacher and so is his brother), but at the same time it seems tons of schools now prefer (or are only able to find positions for) short contracts, more subs and temporary positions etc.
Healthcare has consistently been one of the biggest drivers of US GDP and job growth numbers for years now.
This is one of the major things that has helped explain why US consumer sentiment has been so out of step with headline numbers like employment, consumer spending, and GDP.
It also helps explain why there's so many economists are saying they see limited evidence of a "K-shaped economy", and say they see positive numbers throughout the distribution. It's very difficult to choose not to buy healthcare.
So perhaps we'll never get to a better healthcare+insurance market (nee "Free") through government, but eventually we will just all work in healthcare, and barter our nursing and dental skills in secret away from the insurance coders.
You can move to Singapore, if you want a better healthcare sector.
(The UK spends very roughly half of what the US spends on healthcare in terms of percentage of GDP. That's total (public plus private) expenditure. Singapore spends very roughtly half of what the UK spends by the same measure. Health outcomes amongst the three countries are comparable. If anything, Singapore is healthier.)
Singapore is the beneficiary of a neighboring impoverished itinerant workforce to supplement its own collapsing demographics with artificially cheap services. It’s hardly replicable most places.
How so? What's hard to replicate here? Many rich places could let in more migrant workers. It's good for the workers, and good for the receiving country.
No it isn’t. Malaysians commute across the river daily and then return at night, having provided their services in exchange for compensation. Singapore gets the work without many of the associated problems with housing those people long term. As a result, there are some ridiculously niche jobs in Singapore that would not exist in another rich country, such as widespread domestic servitude and manual street sweeping
Because unless you really just want to prop up only Manhattan’s statistics at the expense of NJ’s, it’s irrelevant to a discussion about US labor statistics.
Europe is also excellent in my experience, specifically Portugal and Spain. My health insurance cost for a family of four in Spain is ~$2k/year as someone on a visa. In the US on an employer plan, it was ~$20k/year (premiums, copays, etc).
While interesting facts, this is typically not the primary criteria which people use to decide where to expat to, versus availability and affordability. I cannot speak to the residency requirements of Singapore, but those of western Europe are very generous, as some who has helped folks leave the US for there. If you are in Spain on a tourist visa, and apply for the equivalent of a digital nomad visa while in country, you get three years as a temporary resident. At three years, you re-apply for another two years, and after those five years you can apply for permanent residency. 80% of your income must come from outside of Spain. They’ll even take a letter from a US W2 employer as income verification.
If you have any resources you can recommend on immigrating to Singapore that would be helpful and relevant for folks considering it as an option (whether on an employment, student, or pension/non lucrative visa), I welcome them to add to my resources for distribution to those seeking an exit strategy. Thank you in advance.
Oh, I was purely talking about what healthcare costs society.
I love it in Singapore, but if you don't want to live in a steam sauna, there are better countries for you. And if you are an American, I guess you don't even benefit from our more enlightened tax system anyway.
> If you are a U.S. citizen or a resident alien of the United States and you live abroad, you are taxed on your worldwide income. However, you may qualify to exclude your foreign earnings from income up to an amount that is adjusted annually for inflation ($107,600 for 2020, $108,700 for 2021, $112,000 for 2022, and $120,000 for 2023). In addition, you can exclude or deduct certain foreign housing amounts.
I think the commenter you responded to filtered first for countries with outcomes better or exceeding the US? Though I’m not sure Portugal and Spain automatically fall into that category
Oh, I picked Singapore, because I moved here. I picked US because that was the topic under discussion. And Britain because the parent comment talked about 'free' healthcare.
I can only n=1, but most, if not all, experiences we've had obtaining medical care were better in Europe. Care specialist for my autistic kids, primary care, etc. From my unofficial surveys, many folks I know in the US are having a hard time finding various care providers, even if they have insurance. More data on this is always welcome.
There will never be a better healthcare because the true cost of fixing a body more often than not far exceeds the value that body produces.
People run to dismiss this with "well we need a different system then", but the problem is a fundamental one on par with "eating your cake and having it too".
The only way to get as close as possible to "good" healthcare is to have enough money to pay for everything out of pocket.
> the true cost of fixing a body more often than not far exceeds the value that body produces
i softly agree but also think that a body does not need to generate value to pay for the costs in order for the whole process to sustain itself. Monitoring the stars for asteroids heading towards earth provides no market value, for example, but we can still afford to do it. so it's a matter of cost and available expenditure. the market is not net 0, so its possible to generate enough value to have enough to afford healthcare as an expense as a society
what are the costs of fixing a body? The residency pipeline is a bottleneck on labor, but assuming that gets sorted out and AI is capable of guiding any reasonable person through the process, why cant the cost of labor for a doctor drop dramatically?
i would guess limited resources are the biggest blockage, but i dont know how to break down a $20k hospital bill for giving birth into its actual costs. its hard to believe that really needs to be $20k.
I actually think its the opposite. there is so much friction with healthcare and the process of healing is slow enough that costs are inflated because the overall operating cost for the entire facility including rent, ER, having people on standby, who knows what else, all need to be recovered through whatever volume they process and they arent processing as quickly as the resources are able.
healthcare needs do not subscribe to a neat work schedule, and so we have to pay a lot of market prices to have the right availability at all times. but thats not a true cost, it is a result of accounting and underutilization
I've seen on youtube how people said a major reason housing is a big employer and housing has not fallen in price is due to their industry's attitude and resistance to introducing technological advancements.
in fairness also regulation makes it hard when it specificies the solutions not the parameters (just to illustrate the idea not an actual rule: you must have X thickness of PVC versus your pipe must withstand X pressure)
Demonstrating the waste of time that 99.9% of Youtube videos offer. Construction has seen tremendous technological advances, from materials to tools, even down to software that monitors workplace events.
All of these have led to conditions where it is expected for an entire house to go from start to finish in 100 days. A house with very high standards of plumbing, electrical, hvac, insulation, and other essentials compared to previous generations.
Based on their July 2026 report, there were tiny increases in several sectors. The big declines were in service providing, leisure and hospitality, and government (bc of a summer decline in local gov education).
This has been the case in several recent reports. It really ought to put to bed the idea that Trump was somehow going to be "good for business" and bring back manufacturing. At best all he's done is create a ton of uncertainty, at worst he's actively harmed massive swaths of American businesses with tariffs, war, and gutting the federal workforce and programs that indirectly supported a ton of businesses.
there's a massive wave of elderly coming (boomer generation) so it makes sense health care is going to becoming an even bigger economic force than it already is.
This isn’t surprising. The population overall is aging. Millenials are now the largest cohort and are approaching middle age. Until recently we’ve seen the number of insured individuals rise consistently and our medicine continues to advance. More older adults have access and need more healthcare
No, I mean on an age-corrected basis, throughout the spectrum of ages.
i.e. young americans are spending more on health care than young americans used to, even if it's also true that there are fewer young americans now, and more old americans.
There is a lot more to spend it on. I'm gen-X, ADHD wasn't even heard of by most people until I was in college, and then it was only diagnosed/treated in the worst cases. Today most kids I know are on some medication for ADHD. A few years ago a friend of mine was told "too bad you are not 25 - I know what treatment you need but we can't give it to someone over 25" - he went to the Mayo clinic for his condition at 23 but the treatment didn't even exist yet so it was a waste of time.
In 1860 someone who went to a doctor would have worse outcomes than someone who stayed home. As medicine gets better over time there is more and more value in seeing a doctor. In turn more an more people are talking to their doctor about things that they would have just ignored a few generations ago. Sometimes this results in unnecessary treatment, but it also results in catching and fixing a lot of real problems that would have made life worse before we could treat it.
Sure, this is of course true, but there's also a reason that Americans spend way way more on their healthcare than any other developed nation, and it's not that they have better healthcare, or more healthcare options.
Americans are spending a lot more on quality-of-life medical interventions, many of which are outside the normal standard of care that would be covered by healthcare systems. It is a booming business in the US and many people seem to have no trouble paying for it.
Just as an anecdote, I’m an older Millennial (1982) and since my late 30s I’ve been spending my HDHP cap in health services that my parents wouldn’t have bothered with, such as allergy shots and niche diagnostic blood tests based on the latest science, some of which have been covered here such as HSCRP. I’ve also had LASIK and had laser skin treatments done. I’m not a health nut, I just realized I don’t have to look and feel like crap in my 40s like my progenitors.
It's my hypothesis that boomers passing away + GLPs largely ending obesity will result in a sharp drop in total healthcare spending in the next decade or two
My main caveat / counter point is that preventative care may actually increase as more and more people jump on the live for ever, dont die, longevity hacking trend.
Not strange. All the money and wealth is in the hands of the olds and olds need much more health care than the young. So it's a gold rush to get their juicy dollars.
I know i'm just one guy but I'm 50 and the old people i know are very poor and supported entirely by their children. It would be interesting to see the median and mean wealth for people >70 and compare the two.
Maybe we can finally reach communism by first getting together and all agreeing "the economy" isn't a science and if we all just believe really hard, numbers can go up forever, then we won't even need money!
It only works until people try to withdraw money that doesn't exist. The less people believe the earlier that happens, but it will happen sooner or later.
Yesterday they were expecting the report to show 80k+ jobs added. So, this is much, much worse than expected. The market is up because they expect this will keep the fed from raising interest rates, and also because the market is increasingly detached from reality.
skill issue. Solved by having the correct model of the world and forces acting on it given (appropriately weighted) current context and your usual variance.
It's usually people who don't understand the context or assign appropriate weights to events and allow randomness that complain about not understanding markets.
For a selloff to happen, investors have to believe there is a better place for them to go. At worst, any bad news right now is making everything look equally bad, so there is no advantage to running away from Wall Street in particular.
The market is going up because the market (AI) thinks it means there will be a rate cut. Which is good for stocks.
But I have to inform you all that we are in a period of stagflation and there is no way out but pain for someone. Either the asset holders or the regular people who need to buy things.
They don’t. They aren’t faking the BLS numbers as an electoral strategy. No one at WH or NRCC or CLF are rubbing their hands together as if this is all according to plan.
if the government was able to lie on the jobs report, why wouldn't they just continuously pretend that jobs are up from now all the way through the election? (all the way through to the presidential election, for that matter)
The 2026 midterm election date is November 3rd, the jobs numbers are released on the first Friday of the month, November 6th. Intentionally trending numbers down in August, with only two more jobs reports before the election, would be risky (and stupid, and extremely unlikely). The Trump Administration just doesn't look ahead like that either, they live in the perpetual now.
in the grand scheme of things 23,000 isn't a big number and mostly a seasonal variability during summer, nothing to do with unions or Trump (I know people love to blame him for everything).
no doubt there's been a rise in costs for the average joe but that's not what the fed targets
no citation needed, its common knowledge that rates drive stock market by acting as a gate to control money flowing between money market and stock market but to explain that is really not my responsibility, a very worrying sign that many Americans are seemingly not aware how much of sway the Federal Reserve play on the global economy.
These jobs lost/gained and unemployment statistics, especially on a monthly basis, and when the numbers are so small, are just noise. Seasonal adjustments alone (baseline assumptions on how many people should be employed) make them meaningless, as does the government definition of being unemployed or looking for work.
As far as the government is concerned if you have been looking for a job for so long and/or are so discouraged that you stop looking, then you are no longer "unemployed" since you are not looking for a job.
If you are software engineer who has not been able find a software job, and are now flipping burgers to at least have some income, then you have also dropped off the government stats since you now have a job.
And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything, and threatening anyone who doesn't support his lies, and it seems we have truly entered a post-truth world where "alternate facts" rule the day.
When you read headlines of companies laying off thousands of employees, that's real. When the government says they've retroactively adjusted their seasonally adjusted fake news, then not so much.
Indeed. Something to note is the labor force participation rate keeps dropping. We’re down to 61.4%. It was 61.5% in June 2026, 62.3% in June 2025.
We also have 4.8 million that are part-time employed, but want full-time work. That’s up from 4.7 million last month, and up from 4.5 million in June 2025, and up further from 4.2 million in June 2024.
There’s also 6.0 million that want a job, but aren’t employed. This is the same as June 2025, but up by 800,000 since June 2024.
So if you take the U-3 number (what’s reported) then factor in the other two figures, you really have 10.5% that are unemployed, discouraged, or underemployed.
—
The other question never answered is, “How many jobs are needed to create equilibrium?”, or where the employment rate remains stable. That’s NEVER talked about by media or the BLS, but it’s actually not difficult to get an approximate answer.
You’d want to look at population growth rates for 18-22 years ago (as those people would now be entering the workforce), multiply that by the labor force participation rate, and then divide as appropriate for the period. Typically, the US economy would need 140,000 - 145,000 new seasonally-adjusted jobs created every month to maintain a steady employment rate, given its historic and current population growth rates.
>Indeed. Something to note is the labor force participation rate keeps dropping. We’re down to 61.4%. It was 61.5% in June 2026, 62.3% in June 2025.
Yes, it's called people getting older and retiring. It's pretty obvious that's the cause if you compare the labor force participation rate overall vs for 25-54 year olds.
> The BLS said employment contracted the most in “local government education,” which declined by 50,000 roles, likely reflecting teachers during summer break
Are most teachers considered and counted as unemployed during summner break? All the teachers I know are paid 12 months a year. 10-month appointments are seen in colleges and universities but even there professors often have grants that pay for their research in the summer and even if not I don't think I'd consider them "unemployed" in the summer.
I believe the BLS tracks all of these. I know they measure people who gave up on finding a job (they call them “discouraged workers” in stats normally).
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen underemployment charts too that seemed to track something like “people with degrees or certifications outside their field”.
They don’t normally make headlines, though. The charts and stats for those are clearly for economists and not formatted to make good headlines on the news.
>As far as the government is concerned if you have been looking for a job for so long and/or are so discouraged that you stop looking, then you are no longer "unemployed" since you are not looking for a job.
> ...
>When you read headlines of companies laying off thousands of employees, that's real. When the government says they've retroactively adjusted their seasonally adjusted fake news, then not so much.
The BLS keeps track of the discouraged workers as well, and it's not significantly different than previous trends.
>And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything, and threatening anyone who doesn't support his lies, and it seems we have truly entered a post-truth world where "alternate facts" rule the day.
You don't see the irony here with what you're doing?
At this point it's fair to doubt just about any claim or number that comes out of the federal government. I'm sure there are still thousands of honest researchers and professionals at all levels of the executive branch, but over the past year so many of them have been pushed out and so many more have been under pressure to produce only politically-approved output, that the federal government is becoming increasingly unreliable as an institution.
> over the past year so many [federal employees] have been pushed out and so many more have been under pressure to produce only politically-approved output
This is the most obvious point in favor of this perspective, especially as it being an escalation by the current president and his administration. It hardly even seems to be a cynical take. At least, the cynicism is being used appropriately, as a tool to guide one's thoughts rather than being the entire argument.
One can look at the DOGE cuts, tally up the numbers, and see for themself that the stated reason (desired reduction of spending that is orders of magnitude higher than what they've actually cut) can't be the actual reason for these cuts. Coupled with the... less than candid statements from this administration about anything and everything the past 17 months (hey, has anyone heard about these "Epstein files"?), the most logical conclusion is that they are deceptive whenever it suits them. And yes, even the nominally-objective numbers need to come attached with a reason to be trusted; we already know a litany of ways they can be manipulated (meaning they are indeed "nominally" objective, and have been for a long time); they can't be reasonably taken at face value.
> You don't see the irony here with what you're doing?
Sorry, is OP the POTUS, speaking with Presidential authority and threatening federal employees with termination of employment for their political beliefs? The fact you think they're wrong is not a reason to equate their comment to Trump's actions.
And when a vast majority of the population isn't working what do these numbers really tell us? If we have fewer jobs, but then the people doing those jobs are paid more and thus paying more in taxes, maybe the jobs numbers don't even matter (I'm not sure that's true, just for arguments sake).
And let's say they were covered up. Ok and what does that change? Are people who already hate Donald Trump going to vote harder and then, what? Pursue the same economic policy? Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.
If the taxes were being spent to help those who were not working (unable to or for whatever reason) maybe that would be fine. We might take in more taxes, but when we cut funding for childhood cancer research, and build more missiles... is this really the way we want our money spent?
> Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.
Perhaps there was more overlap 10 years ago, but... that "both sides are just as bad" doesn't seem to ring true.
> In yet another troubling sign for the labor market, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that it revised down the prior two months by a combined 103,000. May’s jobs total was cut by 66,000 to 129,000 total jobs added, while June’s total was lowered by 37,000 to a total gain of 57,000.
It looks to me like a failure of the American media landscape, that such constant revisal trends are not called out in the reporting of new numbers.
That just makes them a mouthpiece of the government.
One of the reaction threads I saw elsewhere on social media pointed out the response rates for the surveys that come up with these numbers is plummeting--about a decade ago, we had ~85% response rate, now we're done to ~65% response rate. So the initial quality of these numbers is probably getting a lot worse.
No wait required; click the link I gave and you'll see the answer is "yes, definitely". Anything over the zero mark on the Y axis is an upwards revision.
The title of the chart is "Nonfarm Payroll Employment Percent Revisions", with subheading indicating the statistic shown is the final number minus the first released number. The trendline shows the magnitude of the revisions decreasing over time; i.e. that the predictions get more accurate.
> In addition to the strong jobs numbers for May, revisions for prior months also presented an even better picture. The April tally represented an upward revision of 64,000, while March got a boost up to 214,000, a gain of 29,000.
This is how bls data has always worked. And the reason is that they don’t always have the full picture every month and need to account for new data in the stats.
Honest ask because I’ve not generally paid attention…
Is it the case that the numbers always appear more optimistic, and then are revised to be more pessimistic values? Or is it just that the original numbers are off and are revised? Does that make sense?
> They move in both directions regularly, typically in the direction the economic situation is moving
And for good reason! These are surveys. The easiest respondents are those saying “no change.” The latest responses, the ones who had the biggest change. In a booming economy, the biggest changes will be hires. In a troubled one, the biggest changes will be those doing lay-offs.
Add to that: the BLS tries to correct for this effect. Which means at the moment the economy turns, its corrections skew the wrong way. (On the whole, per the above chart, the figures are getting better over time.)
If you can do economics without revision, that is, find the real number of jobs lost or gained or workplace participation in real time, you could make a lot of money. Probably win some prizes, too.
It has nothing to do with economics being an imperfect science and all to do with the nature of collecting real time data. Anyone who can collect accurate real time data can make $$$.
Meanwhile, Canada adds 75k jobs in the same month.
> Gains were focused on the private sector, with strength in wholesale and retail trade, finance and insurance, and professional and scientific services. Public sector jobs fell by 14,500 amid an official bid to cut government spending.
Yeah, our unemployment rate is still higher though with basically no productivity growth since 2015 (see link). Maybe 2 years straight of these job gains and then we can talk.
I have been very critical of the Federal gov (less so under Carney) and I will admit this job report actually was very good as it wasn't just majority public sector hirings which was very common under Trudeau:
Private-sector jobs: +58,000 jobs [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Government/public-sector jobs:-27,000 jobs (a decline) [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Self-employed: +44,000 jobs [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Part-time jobs: +36,600 jobs [money.usnews.com], [ca.finance.yahoo.com]
I suspect that even his proponents knew better, they just didn't care as much about the economy as they did culture wars nonsense and religious woo-woo.
It's not a "suspect" thing, it has been widely reported up and down the chain there is basically no support for tariffs, especially when the economic reality hit. The only supporter is trump, and he can do whatever he wants as king baby.
Interesting, this article doesn't seem to mention the layoffs from the tech industry. Which, if you look at the numbers, sort of make up the bulk of it.
Tech sector is not the bulk of it, many sectors doing worse and that is why they got the headlines. "Financial Activities" supersector was terrible this month. Another reason is there is not an umbrella "tech" sector in the NAICS, so it's harder to report on.
I began rapidly recalling the hundreds of sources foreseeing this well in advance, citing it, raising alarm, and being ignored.
I guess we are supposed to take numbers at face value, disregard what generated them and why, accept what they imply as presented, and never question it.
Then we must patiently withhold intelligence, wait for sanctioned admission, then finally consider what we already knew.
Suddenly, Rome collapsed.
Edit: Don't take the flagging to heart. If you dig, you will find a thousand exceptions made where the single-word comment fit the narrative and endured. This comment will be flagged too.
Thanks you for your kind reply.
Calling it nitpicking doesn't make it untrue and payrolls are not public.
To come up with factual data, one needs do some investigative journalism, and nbcnews' not one of them.
As a data scientist it is very frustrating to see a consistent lack of error bars on these numbers or any discussion about the magnitude of uncertainty around them by all news reports every time these numbers get released
If honest, the error bars would be so large as to make drawing conclusions from these numbers seem pointless. Certainly, both jobs growth and jobs loss are within the CI.
What's actually being tracked by people using this data is the delta from previous years -- which, conditioning on the same collection methodology etc -- is more reliable.
The actionable piece of info is sign(delta)
The bureau of labor statistics publishes confidence intervals in their reports
Not in their primary news release. A footnote says it is "generally conducted at the 90% interval", but the individual numbers do not have their actual computed error bars.
Yes, they do publish them, but it is disappointing their primary releases do not have them.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
NBC wouldn't know how to navigate bls.gov if you put a gun to their head. And it's all downhill from there
https://www.bls.gov/jlt/jltreliability.htm Read the docs
As a physicist, I always shed a tear when looking at data without error bars.
As a data scientist/generic programmer now, I don't really see them anywhere. I remember a colleague during my postdoc saying 'don't worry, no error bars in industry' when I asked about regression with ML lol
hah. it's true. no interest in uncertainty except when forced.
Our fake economy needs even more fake certainty now. They are all hiding from the obvious issue of stagflation because it is the most difficult economic problem to solve. The Fed know this which is why they did nothing with rates.
The numbers are as good as they can get with hard manual work that goes into compiling them.
The problem is that small businesses lag by 1-2 months reporting them, so the initial number being reported is almost always irrelevant, as it mostly applies to numbers coming out of larger corporations.
> The numbers are as good as they can get
That doesn't mean they don't warrant error bars.
Error bars aren't there to show that you didn't do a good job collecting the data, they're there to show your level of uncertainty.
I would say the initial numbers should be embargoed until the number is reliable. People don’t understand error bars and reporting can more easily manipulate the current situation without outright lying.
No, just report them with error bars. We know the 95th percentile revision size of the distribution.
Moot point as the people who actually act on the data understand how to roll their own anyway.
Both? I don't think error bars and waiting to release data until more accurate are mutually exclusive.
That’s what I meant. There should be error bars to reflect uncertainty of the inherent data, but they should wait until all the data that could change things comes in rather than using projections which always drastically change
No, they shouldn't. Timely estimates as to the best knowledge of our current situation is extremely important for decision making under uncertainty.
If the error bars are large, that is important information to know.
What decisions are so important and time sensitive they depend on these numbers right after a month is over? And also we at one point were making decisions without these numbers yet the quality of the decision making isn’t clearly improved.
That's true for the establishment survey, but the population survey, where they contact individuals, is what is actually used to calculate these numbers.
It is literally calling/writing 60,000 people and asking "are you employed? did you look for a job? Etc."
"How the government calculates unemployment" [0]
| Does anyone in this household have a business or a farm? | Last week, did you do any work for (either) pay (or profit)? | If the answer to question 1 is "yes" and the answer to question 2 is "no," the next question is: | Last week, did you do any unpaid work in the family business or farm? | For those who reply "no" to both questions 2 and 3, the next key questions used to determine employment status are: | Last week, (in addition to the business) did you have a job, either full or part time? Include any job from which you were temporarily absent. | Last week, were you on layoff from a job? | What was the main reason you were absent from work last week? | For those who respond "yes" to question 5 about being on layoff, the following questions are asked:
[0] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
You have to wonder, since they are doing two different surveys trying to measure the same reality, which one more accurately measures the facts on the ground? Asking businesses how many people they are employing, or asking households whether or not their folks are working? The numbers don't really match up between the two.
What makes you think it's small businesses? I would assume most businesses doing any reporting at all are using a payroll system. Mine handles the reporting automatically. The kinds of payroll systems used by small businesses can be set up in a day. If anything, small businesses that make even a small effort to stay on top of things have an easier time than big ones with complicated systems and processes.
I think you say “as good as they can get with [the] hard manual work that goes into compiling them” as a way to respect the challenge of the BLS and say they’re doing the best with their resources, but it’s worth pointing out they could be better with more resources.
DOGE hurt them pretty hard: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics posted a notice on Wednesday stating that it stopped collecting data in three not-so-small cities (Lincoln, Nebraska; Buffalo, New York; and Provo, Utah) and increased “imputations” for certain items"
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/05/economy/cpi-data-bls-reductio...
Yes they should have said 23.0 * 10^3.
The deficit is 6% of GDP. Economic growth is 2%, if that. If the Democrats win the House and reduce spending, look out below.
Meanwhile Canada is up 75,000 jobs in July. Can't wait to see the next tantrum America throws our way.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-jobs-july-2026-9.729...
Sorry, what's the connection here?
Canada is currently on the short list of countries Trump throws into his usual mad-libs of grievance flavored policy making.
That looking at monthly numbers is stupid? The US has had significantly more job growth in 2026 than Canada has. The July numbers are convergence to a roughly common mean.
It is stupid. But the connection is that the Americans do international politics in an abusive way now. There is a very real possibility that their leader will see domestic bad number and foreign good number and throw a fit and look for something or someone to beat on. By all means, someone please tell him that looking at the numbers is stupid.
In particular, the Americans have been throwing endless tantrums Canada's way. This week we're "nasty people" because we refuse to become an ecnomimc vassal state. I'm sure we'll hear more tariff sabre rattling from the Americans soon.
What’s the connection between the two most intertwined economies on planet earth?
It doesn't need a connection (even tho there are many). The US/Trump is going after Brazil for creating a payment system.
I have recently started an experiment tracking a sample of 5000 employers in US and I see a bounce last week after a brief lull in july. I am not sure if there is a strong downward trend. https://corvi.careers/reports/usa-weekly-job-openings-report...
It's tough to trust job openings. It is a fact that some number of job postings are ghost jobs that don't exist. Either they're scams from impersonators or the companies are trying to keep a good public face, but many openings sit for MONTHS which just does not line up with the anecdotal evidence of people going 6-12 months without an interview much less an offer
I think that is slightly blunted by this person looking at the week over week delta.
True, but is there any reason to think this dishonesty varies over time? The trend could be informative even if the raw numbers are nonsense
> The BLS said employment contracted the most in “local government education,” which declined by 50,000 roles, likely reflecting teachers during summer break.
This is not entirely accurate. AFAIK, teachers usually remain on payroll throughout the summer. This stat _might_ be talking about contractual teaching roles, like adjuncts or subs, but it's hard to say from that BLS category.
Not to mention, if it's seasonal for any reason then it's something that should be baked into the cyclical expectations already.
It's like reporting that Spirit of Halloween employees accounted for the biggest retailer layoffs in November. It's a totally useless statistic that tells you nothing about what might really be going on that month that's abnormal compared to baseline.
This is correct, teachers don't just stop getting paid and lose all benefits every summer (my best friend is a teacher and so is his brother), but at the same time it seems tons of schools now prefer (or are only able to find positions for) short contracts, more subs and temporary positions etc.
Especially if its not in a well funded area.
What is also interesting is that the only sector thad added jobs was health care.
Healthcare has consistently been one of the biggest drivers of US GDP and job growth numbers for years now.
This is one of the major things that has helped explain why US consumer sentiment has been so out of step with headline numbers like employment, consumer spending, and GDP.
It also helps explain why there's so many economists are saying they see limited evidence of a "K-shaped economy", and say they see positive numbers throughout the distribution. It's very difficult to choose not to buy healthcare.
So perhaps we'll never get to a better healthcare+insurance market (nee "Free") through government, but eventually we will just all work in healthcare, and barter our nursing and dental skills in secret away from the insurance coders.
You can move to Singapore, if you want a better healthcare sector.
(The UK spends very roughly half of what the US spends on healthcare in terms of percentage of GDP. That's total (public plus private) expenditure. Singapore spends very roughtly half of what the UK spends by the same measure. Health outcomes amongst the three countries are comparable. If anything, Singapore is healthier.)
Singapore numbers ignore their underclass, which is significant. But you're right, if you're a westerner, Singapore's great.
Any 'underclass' also contributes to GDP and consumes healthcare. How is any of this ignored?
Singapore is the beneficiary of a neighboring impoverished itinerant workforce to supplement its own collapsing demographics with artificially cheap services. It’s hardly replicable most places.
> It’s hardly replicable most places.
How so? What's hard to replicate here? Many rich places could let in more migrant workers. It's good for the workers, and good for the receiving country.
So is the USA...
No it isn’t. Malaysians commute across the river daily and then return at night, having provided their services in exchange for compensation. Singapore gets the work without many of the associated problems with housing those people long term. As a result, there are some ridiculously niche jobs in Singapore that would not exist in another rich country, such as widespread domestic servitude and manual street sweeping
How is that different from people living in New Jersey and commuting to Manhattan?
Because unless you really just want to prop up only Manhattan’s statistics at the expense of NJ’s, it’s irrelevant to a discussion about US labor statistics.
The US has around 4x the obesity rate of Singapore, which significantly reduces healthcare costs.
Europe is also excellent in my experience, specifically Portugal and Spain. My health insurance cost for a family of four in Spain is ~$2k/year as someone on a visa. In the US on an employer plan, it was ~$20k/year (premiums, copays, etc).
A quick search suggests that Spain spends around 9.3% of gdp on healthcare. The UK spends around 10.9%. Singapore is around 5.5%.
While interesting facts, this is typically not the primary criteria which people use to decide where to expat to, versus availability and affordability. I cannot speak to the residency requirements of Singapore, but those of western Europe are very generous, as some who has helped folks leave the US for there. If you are in Spain on a tourist visa, and apply for the equivalent of a digital nomad visa while in country, you get three years as a temporary resident. At three years, you re-apply for another two years, and after those five years you can apply for permanent residency. 80% of your income must come from outside of Spain. They’ll even take a letter from a US W2 employer as income verification.
If you have any resources you can recommend on immigrating to Singapore that would be helpful and relevant for folks considering it as an option (whether on an employment, student, or pension/non lucrative visa), I welcome them to add to my resources for distribution to those seeking an exit strategy. Thank you in advance.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161587 (resources)
Oh, I was purely talking about what healthcare costs society.
I love it in Singapore, but if you don't want to live in a steam sauna, there are better countries for you. And if you are an American, I guess you don't even benefit from our more enlightened tax system anyway.
> And if you are an American, I guess you don't even benefit from our more enlightened tax system anyway.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
> If you are a U.S. citizen or a resident alien of the United States and you live abroad, you are taxed on your worldwide income. However, you may qualify to exclude your foreign earnings from income up to an amount that is adjusted annually for inflation ($107,600 for 2020, $108,700 for 2021, $112,000 for 2022, and $120,000 for 2023). In addition, you can exclude or deduct certain foreign housing amounts.
I think the commenter you responded to filtered first for countries with outcomes better or exceeding the US? Though I’m not sure Portugal and Spain automatically fall into that category
Oh, I picked Singapore, because I moved here. I picked US because that was the topic under discussion. And Britain because the parent comment talked about 'free' healthcare.
I can only n=1, but most, if not all, experiences we've had obtaining medical care were better in Europe. Care specialist for my autistic kids, primary care, etc. From my unofficial surveys, many folks I know in the US are having a hard time finding various care providers, even if they have insurance. More data on this is always welcome.
Yes and for something rare or complex, you can always fall back on the public health insurance.
I appreciate the collectivism and it is a component of why I am happy to pay Europe any of the taxes they ask for.
Singapore has severe consequences for executives who violate the public trust. That makes it hard for sociopaths to rig the system for the elites.
Maybe. Though Americans are free to vote for politicians who make similar laws, too.
There will never be a better healthcare because the true cost of fixing a body more often than not far exceeds the value that body produces.
People run to dismiss this with "well we need a different system then", but the problem is a fundamental one on par with "eating your cake and having it too".
The only way to get as close as possible to "good" healthcare is to have enough money to pay for everything out of pocket.
There are already better systems of healthcare. The US one is only good if you're wealthy
> the true cost of fixing a body more often than not far exceeds the value that body produces
i softly agree but also think that a body does not need to generate value to pay for the costs in order for the whole process to sustain itself. Monitoring the stars for asteroids heading towards earth provides no market value, for example, but we can still afford to do it. so it's a matter of cost and available expenditure. the market is not net 0, so its possible to generate enough value to have enough to afford healthcare as an expense as a society
what are the costs of fixing a body? The residency pipeline is a bottleneck on labor, but assuming that gets sorted out and AI is capable of guiding any reasonable person through the process, why cant the cost of labor for a doctor drop dramatically?
i would guess limited resources are the biggest blockage, but i dont know how to break down a $20k hospital bill for giving birth into its actual costs. its hard to believe that really needs to be $20k.
I actually think its the opposite. there is so much friction with healthcare and the process of healing is slow enough that costs are inflated because the overall operating cost for the entire facility including rent, ER, having people on standby, who knows what else, all need to be recovered through whatever volume they process and they arent processing as quickly as the resources are able.
healthcare needs do not subscribe to a neat work schedule, and so we have to pay a lot of market prices to have the right availability at all times. but thats not a true cost, it is a result of accounting and underutilization
Redundancy is robustness is expensive.
Growing up, almost every woman I was related to was in education. Principal, office staff, teachers.
Now, almost every woman I'm related to is in health care.
I've been joking for years that eventually everyone will either be in the hospital, or working there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
Any sector that's resistant to productivity growth is liable to become bigger and bigger part of the economy.
yeah but the size of the us healthcare sector (like 18%) is a policy choice, other developed countries have theirs at 10-12%.
U.S. healthcare is a giant predatory clusterfuck and seems impossible to meaningfully reform.
Like the US Justice system, the best advice to give is to avoid the US Healthcare system as much as possible.
Who would need advice to avoid legal and healthcare problems as much as possible?
Singapore has more like 5.5% or so. (That's total expenditure: public plus private added up.)
I've seen on youtube how people said a major reason housing is a big employer and housing has not fallen in price is due to their industry's attitude and resistance to introducing technological advancements.
in fairness also regulation makes it hard when it specificies the solutions not the parameters (just to illustrate the idea not an actual rule: you must have X thickness of PVC versus your pipe must withstand X pressure)
Demonstrating the waste of time that 99.9% of Youtube videos offer. Construction has seen tremendous technological advances, from materials to tools, even down to software that monitors workplace events.
All of these have led to conditions where it is expected for an entire house to go from start to finish in 100 days. A house with very high standards of plumbing, electrical, hvac, insulation, and other essentials compared to previous generations.
I don't call that Heathcare. It call that Heath"Scam" run by Big Pharma and Insurance Mafia.
Based on their July 2026 report, there were tiny increases in several sectors. The big declines were in service providing, leisure and hospitality, and government (bc of a summer decline in local gov education).
i think population pyramids will basically guarantee growth of that sector in almost all first world countries for thenext few decades
I don't think many of the BBB healthcare cuts have hit yet.
This has been the case in several recent reports. It really ought to put to bed the idea that Trump was somehow going to be "good for business" and bring back manufacturing. At best all he's done is create a ton of uncertainty, at worst he's actively harmed massive swaths of American businesses with tariffs, war, and gutting the federal workforce and programs that indirectly supported a ton of businesses.
It was the same in June I think...
That has been the case for most of the year IIRC
there's a massive wave of elderly coming (boomer generation) so it makes sense health care is going to becoming an even bigger economic force than it already is.
Wealthy, aging boomers with increasing need for health care, makes sense.
It's not just boomers (though they are the biggest part of it).
Americans of all ages are spending more on healthcare, and seeking more healthcare interventions than in previous decades.
This isn’t surprising. The population overall is aging. Millenials are now the largest cohort and are approaching middle age. Until recently we’ve seen the number of insured individuals rise consistently and our medicine continues to advance. More older adults have access and need more healthcare
No, I mean on an age-corrected basis, throughout the spectrum of ages.
i.e. young americans are spending more on health care than young americans used to, even if it's also true that there are fewer young americans now, and more old americans.
There is a lot more to spend it on. I'm gen-X, ADHD wasn't even heard of by most people until I was in college, and then it was only diagnosed/treated in the worst cases. Today most kids I know are on some medication for ADHD. A few years ago a friend of mine was told "too bad you are not 25 - I know what treatment you need but we can't give it to someone over 25" - he went to the Mayo clinic for his condition at 23 but the treatment didn't even exist yet so it was a waste of time.
In 1860 someone who went to a doctor would have worse outcomes than someone who stayed home. As medicine gets better over time there is more and more value in seeing a doctor. In turn more an more people are talking to their doctor about things that they would have just ignored a few generations ago. Sometimes this results in unnecessary treatment, but it also results in catching and fixing a lot of real problems that would have made life worse before we could treat it.
Sure, this is of course true, but there's also a reason that Americans spend way way more on their healthcare than any other developed nation, and it's not that they have better healthcare, or more healthcare options.
Part of the Obamacare mandate was forcing young men into health insurance policies when in the past they had a much higher opt out percentage.
Sure, but that's not what's driving these increases in costs.
Why not? Higher demand -> Higher prices.
It isn't just aging.
Americans are spending a lot more on quality-of-life medical interventions, many of which are outside the normal standard of care that would be covered by healthcare systems. It is a booming business in the US and many people seem to have no trouble paying for it.
Just as an anecdote, I’m an older Millennial (1982) and since my late 30s I’ve been spending my HDHP cap in health services that my parents wouldn’t have bothered with, such as allergy shots and niche diagnostic blood tests based on the latest science, some of which have been covered here such as HSCRP. I’ve also had LASIK and had laser skin treatments done. I’m not a health nut, I just realized I don’t have to look and feel like crap in my 40s like my progenitors.
I'm sure ADHD medications / antidepressants / GLP-1s are huge drivers.
It's my hypothesis that boomers passing away + GLPs largely ending obesity will result in a sharp drop in total healthcare spending in the next decade or two
My main caveat / counter point is that preventative care may actually increase as more and more people jump on the live for ever, dont die, longevity hacking trend.
Clankers won't replace medical workers as fast. People get older and have less children too.
Not strange. All the money and wealth is in the hands of the olds and olds need much more health care than the young. So it's a gold rush to get their juicy dollars.
I know i'm just one guy but I'm 50 and the old people i know are very poor and supported entirely by their children. It would be interesting to see the median and mean wealth for people >70 and compare the two.
All wealth is held by olds, but that doesn't mean that all olds are rich.
All basketball players are tall, but that doesn't mean that all tall people are basketball players.
And, as a result, the market is ... up?
Unemployment makes it more likely for the fed to lower interest rates, which makes the stock market more attractive, so, yes.
(Unemployment also generally causes lower inflation in general, at least according to the prevailing macroeconomic school of thought.)
This is why engineers don't make money trading markets
Private sector gained jobs. Public sector lost more jobs than the private sector gained. News reports a negative number.
I wonder if this is the evidence of the labor market decoupling from "the economy" in terms of economic productivity?
Folks keep predicting it. Maybe it's starting?
Maybe we can finally reach communism by first getting together and all agreeing "the economy" isn't a science and if we all just believe really hard, numbers can go up forever, then we won't even need money!
It only works until people try to withdraw money that doesn't exist. The less people believe the earlier that happens, but it will happen sooner or later.
Never withdraw money, only take out loans! the survivors will sort it out, or not... we'll be dead so who cares.
I think we're there already?
If the market expected a worse job loss than 23,000 that would make sense.
I'm not actually suggesting there's a good reason for market swings, just that bad news shouldn't necessarily cause the market to go down.
Yesterday they were expecting the report to show 80k+ jobs added. So, this is much, much worse than expected. The market is up because they expect this will keep the fed from raising interest rates, and also because the market is increasingly detached from reality.
Yeah, I'll never understand the disconnect between Wall Street and the mudslide of diarrhetic bad news that has been rolling in constantly.
skill issue. Solved by having the correct model of the world and forces acting on it given (appropriately weighted) current context and your usual variance.
It's usually people who don't understand the context or assign appropriate weights to events and allow randomness that complain about not understanding markets.
Bad news sells. There is always some bad news to print so you hear about it. That doesn't mean things are bad though.
For a selloff to happen, investors have to believe there is a better place for them to go. At worst, any bad news right now is making everything look equally bad, so there is no advantage to running away from Wall Street in particular.
Bad news is good news, leading to possibly fewer rate hikes
There is no good news. This is stagflation. Worst case scenario.
The market is going up because the market (AI) thinks it means there will be a rate cut. Which is good for stocks.
But I have to inform you all that we are in a period of stagflation and there is no way out but pain for someone. Either the asset holders or the regular people who need to buy things.
Jobs down, threat of increased interest rates down
govt is resetting the baseline now, so we will see some good numbers in November.
it's all about optics for mid term.
No. Very bad economic numbers in August before a midterm is not a cunning political optics move.
It doesn’t matter whether it is a good move; just whether they think it’s a good move.
They don’t. They aren’t faking the BLS numbers as an electoral strategy. No one at WH or NRCC or CLF are rubbing their hands together as if this is all according to plan.
I'm surprised by the conspiratorial comments here like this is some sort of 4D chess move. *It's not.*
This is chickens coming home to roost from US actions in Iran, with tariffs, and other things introducing economic uncertainty.
As you alluded to; this is terrible for Republicans in power. And quite useful for Democrats.
if the government was able to lie on the jobs report, why wouldn't they just continuously pretend that jobs are up from now all the way through the election? (all the way through to the presidential election, for that matter)
The 2026 midterm election date is November 3rd, the jobs numbers are released on the first Friday of the month, November 6th. Intentionally trending numbers down in August, with only two more jobs reports before the election, would be risky (and stupid, and extremely unlikely). The Trump Administration just doesn't look ahead like that either, they live in the perpetual now.
Maybe. But I think the government could just lie about both quarters and then restate after the election.
The worse Q2 looks the bigger improvement a bogus Q3 will look.
Wish i had your optimism.
The big mystery: Will the Fed raise or lower interest rates??? Quick! To the glasses guy:
-whispering to self-
"carry the 2... oh no this can't be good"
-pencil noises-
I solved the equation!!!
We must lay off 1 million more, it is the only way to fix the interest rate!
You guys care about the interest rate don't you???
No more jobs until the books are balanced!!!
We have to it's the only way
Nonsense. We can and do downgrade folks from better to worse employment all the time, even moreso during this administration!
Can't have the plebes unionizing or getting more compensation.
in the grand scheme of things 23,000 isn't a big number and mostly a seasonal variability during summer, nothing to do with unions or Trump (I know people love to blame him for everything).
with inflation under control there is little incentive to raise rates and not enough to cut, consensus is that fed will hold
in the meantime stock market is going to do another major boom cycle
Inflation of certain luxuries may be under control. That's cold comfort to households with two jobs per adult just to make rent+healthcare+food.
> in the meantime stock market is going to do another major boom cycle
Citation needed
no doubt there's been a rise in costs for the average joe but that's not what the fed targets
no citation needed, its common knowledge that rates drive stock market by acting as a gate to control money flowing between money market and stock market but to explain that is really not my responsibility, a very worrying sign that many Americans are seemingly not aware how much of sway the Federal Reserve play on the global economy.
These jobs lost/gained and unemployment statistics, especially on a monthly basis, and when the numbers are so small, are just noise. Seasonal adjustments alone (baseline assumptions on how many people should be employed) make them meaningless, as does the government definition of being unemployed or looking for work.
As far as the government is concerned if you have been looking for a job for so long and/or are so discouraged that you stop looking, then you are no longer "unemployed" since you are not looking for a job.
If you are software engineer who has not been able find a software job, and are now flipping burgers to at least have some income, then you have also dropped off the government stats since you now have a job.
And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything, and threatening anyone who doesn't support his lies, and it seems we have truly entered a post-truth world where "alternate facts" rule the day.
When you read headlines of companies laying off thousands of employees, that's real. When the government says they've retroactively adjusted their seasonally adjusted fake news, then not so much.
Indeed. Something to note is the labor force participation rate keeps dropping. We’re down to 61.4%. It was 61.5% in June 2026, 62.3% in June 2025.
We also have 4.8 million that are part-time employed, but want full-time work. That’s up from 4.7 million last month, and up from 4.5 million in June 2025, and up further from 4.2 million in June 2024.
There’s also 6.0 million that want a job, but aren’t employed. This is the same as June 2025, but up by 800,000 since June 2024.
So if you take the U-3 number (what’s reported) then factor in the other two figures, you really have 10.5% that are unemployed, discouraged, or underemployed.
—
The other question never answered is, “How many jobs are needed to create equilibrium?”, or where the employment rate remains stable. That’s NEVER talked about by media or the BLS, but it’s actually not difficult to get an approximate answer.
You’d want to look at population growth rates for 18-22 years ago (as those people would now be entering the workforce), multiply that by the labor force participation rate, and then divide as appropriate for the period. Typically, the US economy would need 140,000 - 145,000 new seasonally-adjusted jobs created every month to maintain a steady employment rate, given its historic and current population growth rates.
>Indeed. Something to note is the labor force participation rate keeps dropping. We’re down to 61.4%. It was 61.5% in June 2026, 62.3% in June 2025.
Yes, it's called people getting older and retiring. It's pretty obvious that's the cause if you compare the labor force participation rate overall vs for 25-54 year olds.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
Also net population loss of working age adults via deportation and self deportation.
The Fed just had an article on the labor force participation rate drops: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2026/aug/what-is-b...
> The BLS said employment contracted the most in “local government education,” which declined by 50,000 roles, likely reflecting teachers during summer break
Are most teachers considered and counted as unemployed during summner break? All the teachers I know are paid 12 months a year. 10-month appointments are seen in colleges and universities but even there professors often have grants that pay for their research in the summer and even if not I don't think I'd consider them "unemployed" in the summer.
I believe the BLS tracks all of these. I know they measure people who gave up on finding a job (they call them “discouraged workers” in stats normally).
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen underemployment charts too that seemed to track something like “people with degrees or certifications outside their field”.
They don’t normally make headlines, though. The charts and stats for those are clearly for economists and not formatted to make good headlines on the news.
>As far as the government is concerned if you have been looking for a job for so long and/or are so discouraged that you stop looking, then you are no longer "unemployed" since you are not looking for a job.
> ...
>When you read headlines of companies laying off thousands of employees, that's real. When the government says they've retroactively adjusted their seasonally adjusted fake news, then not so much.
The BLS keeps track of the discouraged workers as well, and it's not significantly different than previous trends.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/alternative-...
>And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything, and threatening anyone who doesn't support his lies, and it seems we have truly entered a post-truth world where "alternate facts" rule the day.
You don't see the irony here with what you're doing?
At this point it's fair to doubt just about any claim or number that comes out of the federal government. I'm sure there are still thousands of honest researchers and professionals at all levels of the executive branch, but over the past year so many of them have been pushed out and so many more have been under pressure to produce only politically-approved output, that the federal government is becoming increasingly unreliable as an institution.
> over the past year so many [federal employees] have been pushed out and so many more have been under pressure to produce only politically-approved output
This is the most obvious point in favor of this perspective, especially as it being an escalation by the current president and his administration. It hardly even seems to be a cynical take. At least, the cynicism is being used appropriately, as a tool to guide one's thoughts rather than being the entire argument.
One can look at the DOGE cuts, tally up the numbers, and see for themself that the stated reason (desired reduction of spending that is orders of magnitude higher than what they've actually cut) can't be the actual reason for these cuts. Coupled with the... less than candid statements from this administration about anything and everything the past 17 months (hey, has anyone heard about these "Epstein files"?), the most logical conclusion is that they are deceptive whenever it suits them. And yes, even the nominally-objective numbers need to come attached with a reason to be trusted; we already know a litany of ways they can be manipulated (meaning they are indeed "nominally" objective, and have been for a long time); they can't be reasonably taken at face value.
> You don't see the irony here with what you're doing?
Sorry, is OP the POTUS, speaking with Presidential authority and threatening federal employees with termination of employment for their political beliefs? The fact you think they're wrong is not a reason to equate their comment to Trump's actions.
And this is even after Trump fired the previous Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner for simply reporting poor jobs growth.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-seeks-to-fire-bu...
So you are saying it's even worse than the numbers reported.
"And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything…"
And I suspect, sometime in the future, we're going to discover that the numbers were even worse than we thought they were—were covered up.
Maybe, maybe not.
And when a vast majority of the population isn't working what do these numbers really tell us? If we have fewer jobs, but then the people doing those jobs are paid more and thus paying more in taxes, maybe the jobs numbers don't even matter (I'm not sure that's true, just for arguments sake).
And let's say they were covered up. Ok and what does that change? Are people who already hate Donald Trump going to vote harder and then, what? Pursue the same economic policy? Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.
> thus paying more in taxes
If the taxes were being spent to help those who were not working (unable to or for whatever reason) maybe that would be fine. We might take in more taxes, but when we cut funding for childhood cancer research, and build more missiles... is this really the way we want our money spent?
> Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.
Perhaps there was more overlap 10 years ago, but... that "both sides are just as bad" doesn't seem to ring true.
Job numbers have always been reviewed down after being released every single time since 2022.
https://archive.is/bsnvr
All part of the misanthropic plan?
Note, also:
> In yet another troubling sign for the labor market, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that it revised down the prior two months by a combined 103,000. May’s jobs total was cut by 66,000 to 129,000 total jobs added, while June’s total was lowered by 37,000 to a total gain of 57,000.
I'm not an expert at quantifying the magnitude of how bad that is, but revision down is not something "exceptional". The numbers have been revised down consistently since ~2022: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/business/economy/economy-...
It does make you wonder if the July shedding of jobs could be lowered even further to ~100k+ jobs lost (since they revise down very consistently).
Yeah, that wouldn't be a surprise.
It looks to me like a failure of the American media landscape, that such constant revisal trends are not called out in the reporting of new numbers. That just makes them a mouthpiece of the government.
One of the reaction threads I saw elsewhere on social media pointed out the response rates for the surveys that come up with these numbers is plummeting--about a decade ago, we had ~85% response rate, now we're done to ~65% response rate. So the initial quality of these numbers is probably getting a lot worse.
https://xcancel.com/ernietedeschi/status/1951721848393105573 indicates they've been getting better over time.
I'd suspect better computing helps a lot here.
Cut that graph to the last decade, and they don't look like they've been getting better.
The COVID era is likely to be an outlier in many things.
These guys are just nonstop liars. Print the headline, revise when no one is looking.
To be fair, revisions are very normal, because the more reliable data (tax filings, for example) comes in later.
https://xcancel.com/ernietedeschi/status/1951721848393105573
Are they ever revised higher? I'll wait...
No wait required; click the link I gave and you'll see the answer is "yes, definitely". Anything over the zero mark on the Y axis is an upwards revision.
I did, You do not know how to read a graph. That line through the middel is just showing the trend of jobs numbers.
Still waiting. Just find me one article that says "Last months BLS jobs were revised higher".
The title of the chart is "Nonfarm Payroll Employment Percent Revisions", with subheading indicating the statistic shown is the final number minus the first released number. The trendline shows the magnitude of the revisions decreasing over time; i.e. that the predictions get more accurate.
For a concrete example, as you request: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/05/jobs-report-may-2026.html
> In addition to the strong jobs numbers for May, revisions for prior months also presented an even better picture. The April tally represented an upward revision of 64,000, while March got a boost up to 214,000, a gain of 29,000.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/business/economy/trump-jo...
> What has been unusual during the early months of Mr. Trump’s term is that the revisions have been consistently in the same direction: down.
You do not know how to read a graph, it seems.
The jobs numbers are notoriously laggy. On the way up, lag means constant upwards revisions. On the way down, lag means constant downwards revisions.
ADP Payrolls are a lower latency indicator but not quite as broad.
This is how bls data has always worked. And the reason is that they don’t always have the full picture every month and need to account for new data in the stats.
Honest ask because I’ve not generally paid attention…
Is it the case that the numbers always appear more optimistic, and then are revised to be more pessimistic values? Or is it just that the original numbers are off and are revised? Does that make sense?
They move in both directions regularly, typically in the direction the economic situation is moving at the time.
Chart: https://xcancel.com/ernietedeschi/status/1951721848393105573
> They move in both directions regularly, typically in the direction the economic situation is moving
And for good reason! These are surveys. The easiest respondents are those saying “no change.” The latest responses, the ones who had the biggest change. In a booming economy, the biggest changes will be hires. In a troubled one, the biggest changes will be those doing lay-offs.
Add to that: the BLS tries to correct for this effect. Which means at the moment the economy turns, its corrections skew the wrong way. (On the whole, per the above chart, the figures are getting better over time.)
If you can do economics without revision, that is, find the real number of jobs lost or gained or workplace participation in real time, you could make a lot of money. Probably win some prizes, too.
Economics is an imperfect science.
It has nothing to do with economics being an imperfect science and all to do with the nature of collecting real time data. Anyone who can collect accurate real time data can make $$$.
Sudden reversal? It’s been the apocalypse for several years with each year getting worse
Meanwhile, Canada adds 75k jobs in the same month.
> Gains were focused on the private sector, with strength in wholesale and retail trade, finance and insurance, and professional and scientific services. Public sector jobs fell by 14,500 amid an official bid to cut government spending.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-can...
Yeah, our unemployment rate is still higher though with basically no productivity growth since 2015 (see link). Maybe 2 years straight of these job gains and then we can talk.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=361007...
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260807/dq260...
Yes, agreed.
Who actually believes these numbers?
weird dejavu because this exact comment was on the last one of these job lost updates i saw
I love how this is immediately used as an excuse to reinflate the AI bubble. Silicon Valley and Wall Street are just begging for backlash.
Meanwhile Canada added 75,000 new jobs in July. Perhaps Trump's tariff scheme is not working so well after all.
https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/9.7299225
I have been very critical of the Federal gov (less so under Carney) and I will admit this job report actually was very good as it wasn't just majority public sector hirings which was very common under Trudeau:
Private-sector jobs: +58,000 jobs [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Government/public-sector jobs:-27,000 jobs (a decline) [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Self-employed: +44,000 jobs [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Part-time jobs: +36,600 jobs [money.usnews.com], [ca.finance.yahoo.com]
No one with at least two brain cells to rub together thought the tariffs was going to make anything better.
I suspect that even his proponents knew better, they just didn't care as much about the economy as they did culture wars nonsense and religious woo-woo.
It's not a "suspect" thing, it has been widely reported up and down the chain there is basically no support for tariffs, especially when the economic reality hit. The only supporter is trump, and he can do whatever he wants as king baby.
To be fair, a plurality of voters care more about the culture war than the economy as well.
Interesting, this article doesn't seem to mention the layoffs from the tech industry. Which, if you look at the numbers, sort of make up the bulk of it.
Tech sector is not the bulk of it, many sectors doing worse and that is why they got the headlines. "Financial Activities" supersector was terrible this month. Another reason is there is not an umbrella "tech" sector in the NAICS, so it's harder to report on.
Guess it's time for Trump to fire another BLS director and find one who's better at cooking the books...
Vertical Thinkers: “Who could’ve seen this coming when all the data looks good?!”
Lateral Thinkers: quietly sipping tea, nursing our wounds from layoffs, lamenting another unheard Cassandra moment.
Basically sums up the mood, I find. Don’t worry, we’re always steeping a fresh pot for the new club members when stories like these hit the wire.
"sudden"
My thought exactly.
I began rapidly recalling the hundreds of sources foreseeing this well in advance, citing it, raising alarm, and being ignored.
I guess we are supposed to take numbers at face value, disregard what generated them and why, accept what they imply as presented, and never question it.
Then we must patiently withhold intelligence, wait for sanctioned admission, then finally consider what we already knew.
Suddenly, Rome collapsed.
Edit: Don't take the flagging to heart. If you dig, you will find a thousand exceptions made where the single-word comment fit the narrative and endured. This comment will be flagged too.
I predict the numbers will look good after November. Maybe not reality but the numbers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The great reversal is happening. It was about time to quell the bubble-sayers.
firstly :: "economy" cannot lose jobs because it doesn't have any. Secondly :: there is absolutely no way for you to know it.
That’s just nitpicking words and yes you can tell from payroll
Thanks you for your kind reply. Calling it nitpicking doesn't make it untrue and payrolls are not public. To come up with factual data, one needs do some investigative journalism, and nbcnews' not one of them.
Still has a long way to go to catch us up on the other side of the pond.