The U.S. Added Nearly a Million Fewer Jobs in the Past Year Than Previously Thought, Updated Data Shows

The U.S. economy added hundreds of thousands fewer jobs in 2024 and early 2025 than previously thought, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), indicating a much weaker labor market than prior data showed. An updated report from the BLS showed that U.S. employers created 911,000 fewer jobs between April 2024 and March 2025 than previously reported, appearing to mark the largest revision to federal employment data on record. The update suggests the economy only added about 850,000 jobs within that window, just half the number indicated by past data.  The striking revision arrives after President Donald Trump fired BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer last month over a weak jobs report, alleging that the data McEntarfer provided was “rigged” to make him and Republicans look bad. Trump has not provided evidence for his accusations, which economists have widely pushed back against.  The revision of federal jobs data is part of a routine process known as benchmarking, in which surveys of businesses and state unemployment records are used to adjust previous numbers to more accurately reflect the employment landscape. The updated numbers released Tuesday, which are considered preliminary and will be finalized early next year, offer a clearer picture of the job market before Trump took office and imposed higher tariffs and ramped up his immigration agenda, factors that have weighed on the labor economy.  A separate monthly jobs report published last week showed that unemployment rates ticked up and job growth slowed in August, with just 22,000 new positions created. The report was the first the agency released since McEntarfer’s firing. It also showed that the labor market lost 13,000 jobs in June, marking the first net decline in employment since late 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more: How to Land a Job in 2025—Even If Everyone Says It’s the Worst Time to Graduate Trump has nominated Heritage Foundation chief economist E.J. Antoni, who contributed to the conservative group’s controversial Project 2025 agenda and was seen outside of the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riots in 2021, to lead the BLS. The White House has said Antoni was only a “bystander” during the Jan. 6 attack.  Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick dismissed the August report and said the White House expects a surge in jobs, despite the evidence of a slowdown in hiring. The unemployment rate in the U.S. remains at a relatively low level in historic terms at 4.3 percent, despite rising slightly in August.. Last year, the federal jobs data was revised to show that 818,000 fewer jobs were created in the year ending in March 2024 than previously reported, which was at the time the biggest adjustment in over 10 years.