What you need to know about the jobs report revisions

It's the only report we have an air horn for.

But it is true that the downward revisions were large. So today on the show, how revisions to the jobs numbers happen, what the process is, and what law. What did last week's revisions say about the economy? Here on the indicator, we have announced the jobs numbers right from the show's beginning. We knew it had to be

254,000 jobs were added, 187,000.

We do need to caution, though, the jobs report is just the first pass. The numbers can change a lot. Like we saw on Friday is that the BLS made a big downward revision to its previously reported job numbers.

Yeah. And you know, revisions are a big part of the jobs report. They happen all the time. Yes, it was larger than normal, but every single month, the previous couple of months gets revised. And then there's a big adjustment annually, too.

Lately, when late homework meets a conspiratorially minded president, heads will roll.

Yeah. Bill says there might be underlying issues that particularly affect the stragglers, the companies that don't respond to the survey in the first month.

As Bill said, a possible reason for the big revisions could be that tariffs are affecting smaller businesses more than larger businesses.

Yeah. It could mean those smaller companies aren't hiring as much. It could also be that the companies that aren't responding are actually going out of business.

A lot of reasons. But aren't there always reasons why this time is different? Like there's always something going on, maybe a hurricane or new tax cuts. If you look at the technical notes that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the bls, puts out, the first round of jobs Numbers has a 90% confidence interval.

And for the first release, when it Comes to the jobs report, that ballpark is roughly plus or minus 136,000 jobs. Anything less than that number means you can't even be sure any jobs are added.

True. That said, by the. The third month, when you get those revisions in, after more businesses have responded, the precision increases.

Would it be better just to hold the data until the numbers are more solid?

Bill believes a lot of people who use the job's numbers would prefer imperfect over no data at all.

Mike's team's reports could influence how much money Wells Fargo lends out to people and businesses.

And he says the jobs numbers are

The first estimates of jobs numbers have actually been getting more reliable over time, on average. That's through better statistical techniques. But could the system be improved further

On yesterday's show, we learned that the BLS had faced about a 10% budget cut since 2009. When you account for inflation, that's less money for those civil servants who painstakingly call up hundreds of businesses every month, reminding them to hand in their homework on time. This episode was produced by Corey Bridges with engineering by Kwesi Lee. It was fact checked by Sarah Juarez. Kicking Cannon edits the show, and the indicator is a production of NPR.