The sum of the initial estimate from each of the government’s monthly job growth reports in 2023 totaled 3,140,000 new jobs, with later reports revising down the number of jobs added by a collective 443,000, according to the BLS. The BLS also announced in August a revision in total employment for March, subtracting another 306,000 jobs.
“By the time you include all the monthly revisions and the annual benchmark revision, about one-quarter of all the jobs we thought were added last year have been revised away,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF. “That pattern of consistent downward revisions has happened in two prior recessions. It is a result of market conditions changing too rapidly for the BLS to adjust their methodology, which in turn causes consistent errors in measuring nonfarm payrolls.”
Dec jobs report 🧵: there's SO much bad news under the hood of this report, including the economy shedding 1.5 million full-time jobs in a single month, big downward revisions, and a true unemployment rate between 6.4% and 7.5% – here's the truth you should know… pic.twitter.com/z1BU4irJea
— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) January 5, 2024
The number of jobs was revised down for every month in 2023, except July, excluding December which will have any changes announced in the January and February 2024 monthly jobs reports, according to the BLS. There were 216,000 jobs added in December, with 52,000 of those being in government, bringing the total number of government employees to an all-time high of 23 million.
JUST IN: 10 of the last 11 months have seen downward revisions in their jobs number, according to Zerohedge.
The November 2023 jobs number was revised lower, from 199,000 to 173,000.
This means that the November jobs report actually missed expectations of 180,000.
The October… pic.twitter.com/UMlTW8yPZi
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) January 5, 2024
The number of downward revisions seen in 2023 was not typical in the two preceding years, with 2022 only seeing negative revisions in five months, in total revising jobs down by 66,000 for the year, according to the BLS. There was only one downward revision in 2021 to the numbers released in March, with the number of jobs being revised up by nearly 2 million for the year as the country recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is not normal for the @BLS_gov to initially overstate job creation in the monthly employment situation report like this. 11/12 prior months.
The GOV initially reported nearly a half a million more jobs than were created last year.
This pattern of downward revisions STINKS.
— Rich Baris The People's Pundit (@Peoples_Pundit) January 7, 2024
“If not an economic downturn, there must be something else causing the errors to almost all go in the same direction, and by considerable magnitude,” Antoni told the DCNF. “These patterns in the data clearly indicate that something is not quite right with the number crunching at BLS last year.”
The BLS did not immediately respond to a request to comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.