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A comment on Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase. Parent comment

Re:Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations ... by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @05:52PM (#44449238)
> for those who wonder "why revise downward if it's a lie?", because the numbers eventually are going to collide with reality so they need to be right sized after the fact

No, this is not the reason. The numbers that get fanfare are the preliminary BLS numbers. BLS collects data through surveys. Preliminary data are published with incomplete responses. As more employers respond, the numbers get updated.

Guess which employers tend to report late? Those that are doing lots of hiring and firing. So the stable numbers come in first. Then the volatile numbers later. This is well documented, happens on the way up and down, and is constantly (and wrongly) quoted as a partisan conspiracy going both ways.

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Re:Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations ... by slashdev on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @08:03PM (#44450165)
The numbers have been so consistently wrong in the same direction. It could be that there are other things going on, but simply that volatile numbers come in later doesn’t seem to explain the bias.
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Re:Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations ... by s1artibartfast on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @09:48PM (#44450842)
Yes it does. It firms are consistently firing , the preliminary data will always be better and then revised down.

Preliminary reports always underplay the direction of the change

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Re:Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations ... by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @11:59PM (#44451503)
> numbers have been so consistently wrong in the same direction

Because the data have been going in one direction recently. When the job market booms, the revisions are upwards. Then everyone gets to wax lyrical about how BLS is socking the President.

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Re:Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations ... by eigen on Thursday July 03, 2025 @12:26AM (#44451623)
> The numbers have been so consistently wrong in the same direction.

summary of mean revision for seasonally adjusted numbers, since 2003 are

2nd-1st: 8

3rd-2nd: 2

1st-3rd: 10

but 2025 has been consistently, so far, be negative revisions. Dec 2024 has some positive revisions but 2023-2024 on the whole was negative while 2017-2022 were on the whole positive revision. so I dont think that there is data to support consistently wrong in one direction.

https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesnaicsrev.htm

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Re:Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations ... by llm_nerd on Thursday July 03, 2025 @11:38AM (#44456161)
Yet another B of L stellar job report just dropped. Once again "higher than expected" jobs.

Anyone want to take bets on how the revisions will go on this?

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