Welp, they don’t call it the Bureau of Lies and Stories for nothing!

But my goodness, did the Bureau of Labor Statistics screw the pooch this time, or what?

I’m confident my eight-year-old can count more competently than the so-called statisticians at the BLS.

Just so you know I’m not making any of this up, let me let them tell you what they did:

Current Employment Statistics Preliminary Benchmark (National) - March 2025

The preliminary estimate of the Current Employment Statistics (CES) national benchmark revision to total nonfarm employment for March 2025 is -911,000 (-0.6 percent), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

…

The preliminary benchmark revision reflects the difference between two independently derived employment counts, each subject to their own sources of error. It serves as a preliminary measure of the total error in CES employment estimates from March 2024 to March 2025.

That reminds me of Airplane II, when Elaine was trying to keep the passengers calm:

Elaine Dickinson: [On the P.A.] Ladies and gentlemen, please calm down. Please listen to me! I want to tell you what's going on with the ship! Thank you. We've been thrown off course just a tad.

Woman: Miss? What exactly is "a tad?"

Elaine Dickinson: In space terms, that's about half a million miles.

The Bureau of Lies and Stories: Reloaded

“Another year, another massive reset to the government job numbers.”

That’s how my friend and colleague Dave Gonigam opened his piece on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest annual “benchmark” revisions. As we’ve been at the Rude, the Dave and Emily Clancy’s Five Bullets has been on this story since last year, when the BLS sheepishly admitted it had overstated job creation by 818,000 between April 2023 and March 2024.

As Dave noted, those monthly “job gains” of 242,000 were really just 174,000 once the truth came out.

Nobody cared about these revisions until then. But, as Dave noted, last year’s timing was delicious:

• Election year optics. Republicans accused Biden’s crew of cooking the books to pump out happy headlines, then quietly burying the real numbers later. Plausible? Absolutely. Proven? Not yet.
  
  
• Fed cover. That big downward revision gave Powell & Co. political permission to deliver a half-point “super cut” in rates. Republicans cried foul, saying it was all about propping up Team Blue before November. As you may recall, I was absolutely gobsmacked when Powell cut 50 basis points last September.

Fast-forward to this morning.

The New Math: Minus 911,000

That’s right — this year’s benchmark revision vaporized 911,000 jobs from April 2024 through March 2025.

So, the supposedly modest 147,000 jobs per month were really a miserable 71,000.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was already skeptical before the revisions hit the wires: “I’m not sure what these people who collect the data have been doing.”

And who can blame him? These revisions technically cover only the first 10 weeks of Trump 47, but the whole episode reeks of systemic failure. No wonder Trump fired the BLS director in July after another weak jobs print. The nominee for the replacement is still stuck in Senate limbo.

But as Dave pointed out, the problem isn’t just political. It’s structural. Businesses don’t respond to BLS surveys the way they used to. Some ignore them. Others reply months late. The statisticians are flying blind — and once a year, we discover just how blind.

As I’ve written before (Biden, Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics,The Bureau of Lies and Stories, andTrump Decapitates the BLS), this isn’t statistics. It’s storytelling.

Why It Matters: The Fed’s Next Move

Dave flagged the most immediate consequence: this announcement comes just eight days before Jerome Powell and his band of the merry PhDs meet again on rates.

The futures market isn’t buying a super-sized cut this time. Odds of a half-point trim? Only 8%. Odds of a quarter-point? A rock-solid 92% — from 4.50% down to 4.25%.

But keep an eye on Thursday’s inflation release, also courtesy of the BLS. If they cook up another magical set of numbers, Powell may have more cover to slash deeper.

Once again, the “revisions” don’t just rewrite history — they shape the future.

The Border Factor

Here’s one wrinkle I’ll add to Dave’s analysis: next year’s revisions could be even more “interesting.”

The border has been effectively closed since spring, after years of massive inflows of migrant labor. That means the U.S. economy might not need as many “new jobs” each month as the old models assumed. If the BLS hasn’t updated those assumptions, the revisions will get even messier.

Main Street Doesn’t Buy It

While Washington fiddles with spreadsheets, Main Street is telling a very different story.

The National Federation of Independent Business reports its August Small Business Optimism Index at 100.8. That’s four straight months above the long-term average (a series going back to 1973).

NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg says: “Optimism increased slightly in August… While owners have cited an improvement in overall business health, labor quality remained the top issue.”

Translation: Good help is still hard to find.

The survey reveals that “quality of labor” is the number-one headache for 21% of owners. Taxes are second at 17%. Inflation is third at 11%. “Poor sales” at 10% — elevated now for four months running.

Unfilled positions remain rampant in construction, manufacturing, and transportation. The very sectors politicians love to crow about.

So yes, the BLS says jobs aren’t being created. However, small-business owners are still struggling to find workers. The disconnect couldn’t be more evident.

Wrap Up

Dave’s reporting lays it out: another million-job mirage, courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

If you took the official numbers at face value these past two years, you’d think the U.S. economy was in decent shape. The revisions prove otherwise: growth is weak, job creation is pitiful, and the narrative is flimsy.

And here’s the real kicker: if the BLS can’t even count jobs, how much faith should we put in their inflation stats? Their wage data? Productivity?

Answer: none.

The BLS isn’t in the business of truth. It’s in the business of storytelling.