https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Consensus forecast was for an increase of 66,000 jobs and for the unemployment rate to remain at 4.4%, so actual figures surprised on the high side for jobs and on the low side for unemployment.
Revisions to previous months' job totals amounted to -17,000: -15,000 for November and -2,000 for December.
Final benchmark revisions to the March 2025 employment level was -898,000 (seasonally adjusted) or -862,000 (not seasonally adjusted). This is an update to the -911,000 (nsa) adjustment previously reported.
[FRED graph of monthly change (in thousands) in nonfarm payroll employment levels since Jan 2021](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1fhmC).
[FRED graph of the headline unemployment rate since Jan 2021](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1fhng).
[FRED graph of more expansive unemployment definitions (U-3 thru U-6) since Jan 2021](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Efo7)
Posted by JeromesNiece
2 Comments
I was a bit surprised by the consistency and magnitude of downward monthly revisions. Hopefully with reanchored Births-Deaths should get more accurate levels going forward.
Republicans will say it’s proof things are great, Democrats will say it’s a cooked number and will be revised down in two months anyway.
No political party, Democrat or Republican, will “fix” the economy because to most voters, “everything is so expensive” is just as much about purchasing power as it is about how the economy is structured.
I’m of the mind that much of the malaise people feel, economically speaking, is driven mostly by an increasing ease of which companies can extract recurring revenue from you. Nothing better encapsulated this for me than seeing a self-checkout kiosk at the O’Hare airport ask me if I wanted to tip 30%. It was so cold, so thankless, and so expectant and audacious that it made me laugh. It felt like a microcosm of just shameless financial extraction for a degraded service. For a $7 water.
Everything is a subscription now. Businesses have spent the last ten years optimizing their products and services so there is as little friction between you and recurring revenue. People think the economy sucks because anything of any joy in life is now a monthly subscription fee, and to get even a bit more joy, you need to upgrade your package.
This is one of the few places I will argue that, what we really need, is inefficiency. Sometimes, friction is good. Machines rely on friction as much as they do lubrication; it’s simply a question of how much, and where. More friction between a company and your wallet would undoubtedly be worse for companies, but would probably be much better for people’s mental health and wellbeing.