Every month, the Job Hopper covers the jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Sometimes, the data lines up with economists’ expectations and the general market vibe. Sometimes, like this month, the jobs report is very, very weird.
The topline numbers blew analysts’ estimates out of the water. Prior to the report’s release, economists polled by Reuters were forecasting the addition of 135,000 jobs to public and private non-farm payrolls. The actual tally was a whopping 228,000 jobs added. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2%, while other measures of employment — the number of long-term unemployed, the labor-force participation rate, and the employment-population ratios — were essentially unchanged for the month.
None of this would be particularly unusual. Because of the nature of data collection, reports like these are a better picture of what happened last month than what’s going on right now. Plus, economists aren’t psychic; labor market predictions fail to anticipate the actual numbers all the time.
What’s weird about this report is that it doesn’t seem to capture what’s been going on in the job market for the past few months. For example, Challenger, Gray & Christmas recently released its tally of job cuts for March: 275,240 total cuts, 60% higher than February’s and a 205% increase from March 2024 (the highest total for last year).
So what’s going on here? Well, for one thing, the BLS report doesn’t capture recent cuts to government employers, who are still paying leave or severance to laid-off workers. Those numbers won’t hit the BLS report until the government workers stop getting paid. In addition, the other big shakeup — Trump’s tariff policies — is just now hitting the workforce, and the results won’t show up for at least another month.
Still, it has to be said: this report is an oddball. Maybe there will be major revisions; January and February’s totals were revised downward by a combined 48,000. Or maybe this is the calm before the storm.
What Experts Are Saying
“Job cut announcements were dominated last month by Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] plans to eliminate positions in the federal government. It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs,” –Andrew Challenger, Senior Vice President and Workplace Expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas
“The jobs data tells us about March. The tariff impact begins in April. Markets know it. Policy analysts know it. And businesses, particularly those that rely on global sourcing or fragile supply chains, are already bracing. This week’s job data reflects a strong and stable economy, but that snapshot has a timestamp. Between a potential consumer pullback, shifting corporate investment, and the possibility of retaliation from trade partners, today’s economic momentum may prove hard to sustain.” –Thomas J. Thompson, Chief Economist at Havas, at LinkedIn
“I’m getting lots of emails and messages from readers asking whether we should trust these numbers. That’s an understandable question given comments from Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, suggesting he might seek to change the way the government calculates some statistics, and the administration’s decision to kill off expert committees that advised the statistical agencies, among other moves. But so far, there is no evidence that the administration has done anything to interfere with the data itself, and sources inside the statistical agencies say they are doing their work normally. In other words, yes, I trust these numbers, at least for now.” –Ben Casselman, Chief Economics Correspondent, The New York Times
Just Give Me the Data, Please
The Employment Situation Summary by the numbers:
Total nonfarm employment: 228,000
Unemployment rate: 4.2%
Long-term unemployed: 1.5 million
Labor force participation rate: 62.5%
Employment-population ratio: 59.9%
People employed part-time for economic reasons: 4.8 million
Average hourly earnings: +9 cents (0.3%) to $36.00
Industries that added jobs:
Healthcare (+54,000 jobs)
Social assistance (+24,000 jobs)
Retail trade (+24,000 jobs)
Transportation and warehousing (+23,000 jobs)
Industry that lost jobs:
Federal government (-4,000 jobs)
Industries that remained flat:
Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction
Construction
Manufacturing
Wholesale trade
Information
Financial activities
Professional and business services
Leisure and hospitality
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