Once again, the Employment Situation, a.k.a. the jobs report, quoted a number that likely won’t be “correct” for long: 115,000 jobs created in April, rather than the projected 55,000.
Why assume the numbers are inaccurate? Because even recently, there are too many examples of things going wrong. When people were celebrating the 178,000-job jump that the March 2026 numbers announced, they likely didn’t look at this added note from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: “The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for January was revised up by 34,000, from +126,000 to +160,000, and the change for February was revised down by 41,000, from -92,000 to -133,000. With these revisions, employment in January and February combined is 7,000 lower than previously reported.”
The April 2026 Employment Situation report reads similarly. Nonfarm payroll employment was up by 115,000, significantly higher than the projected 55,000, according to the Dow Jones poll of economists. Further down the release came the revisions paragraph:
“The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for February was revised down by 23,000, from -133,000 to -156,000, and the change for March was revised up by 7,000, from +178,000 to +185,000. With these revisions, employment in February and March combined is 16,000 lower than previously reported.”
Systemic problems have plagued the jobs data for years now. The information is based on survey data and then statistically projected at a national level. Accuracy at that level depends, among other things, on having a correct sampling model, a relatively random sample out of the study universe, and solid responses, because if too few answer, the results can effectively become a self-selected sample, which isn’t statistically valid.
Federal law does require companies to answer certain information requests. The jobs survey is not one of the categories. Getting enough response for a mathematically defensible means contacting companies to get the information. Unfortunately, Beltway belt-tightening has included cutting BLS staff, leaving fewer people to do the follow-up grunt work. The semiannual adjustments when
The focus on jobs created distracts from other important questions beyond the revisions. For example, the number of unemployed rose by 134,000 and the labor force dropped by 92,000, meaning that the number of employed people dropped by 226,000, even though 115,000 were hired.
There’s a question of what unemployment rate you choose. The 4.3% rate reported as not having changed is called the U-3, one of six different ways of measuring unemployment. U-6 is the largest measure, and it is defined as “total unemployed, plus all people marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part-time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all people marginally attached to the labor force,” as the BLS explains.
The U-6 measure grew from 8.0% in March to 8.2% in April 2026, up from 7.3% in April 2025, or an increase of 0.9 percentage points, a large jump. The below graph from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows how the U-6 has changed over time.
In a larger context, an 8.2% U-6 doesn’t seem that high until you realize that rising values, at least since 1994, have preceded a recession. However, the run-up of the U-6 since the opening of 2023 seems a relatively slow climb, so who knows what will happen?
Then there is the question of what industries are seeing job growth as well. In April, it largely came down to healthcare and social assistance; transportation and warehousing; and retail trade, according to an analysis by KPMG U.S. Chief Economist Diane Swonk.
Healthcare and social assistance have become the bright point over the last year, providing the bulk of actual job growth in 2025. Most industries are not growing employment. The number of people leaving jobs fell. Those entering or reentering the labor market are having trouble finding work.
Oxford Economics did note that more than half of all industries expanded their headcount for the fourth straight month, “a breadth of hiring not seen in two years.”
“Yet beneath the headline numbers, cracks are forming,” Oxford wrote. “The job-finding rate is near its lowest point since 2015, voluntary quits are historically subdued, and wage growth has slowed to a three-month annualized rate of just 2.8 percent — the softest since late 2023. With gas prices surging and inflation potentially approaching 4 percent in April, real purchasing power is being squeezed, particularly for the roughly three-quarters of working-age adults who own or lease a car.”
There is a view that, at least for now, the jobs report would suggest the Federal Reserve has reason to hold interest rates where they are in case inflation rises. But that seems cold comfort, as does so much on the economic front right now.
Read the full article here