On August 21, 2024, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a notice that seems to be taking Social Media by storm. In it the BLS stated that after doing their ordinary checking they found that March 2024 data overestimated the number of jobs by 818,000. This is a preliminary to the regular audit that they do every January. So, in this audit they are only checking March as a sample of what is to come.
Back in April when this data was released we published an article entitled March 2024 Employment Higher Than Expected and now we know why. Originally, they said there were 157,218,000 jobs in March up from 156,599,000 putting employment 659,000 jobs above the previous year. But if that number were actually a decrease of -818,000 rather than an increase, it would have meant that jobs were LOWER than the previous year not higher, which would probably have had more impact on markets.
If you have been a long-time subscriber you will know that this isn’t the first time that the BLS has made massive changes to their numbers after the fact. Every month the numbers are different from the originally issued numbers. Sometimes they are slightly different and sometimes they are significantly different. They continue modifying them for three months and then they go back in January and modify them once more. [Read more…] about BLS Erases 800,000 Jobs