Claudia Sahm, Columnist

The Jobs Numbers Went Down, But Trust in Them Shouldn’t

When government agencies revise their data, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics did last month, it usually means they have more reliable information.

September 3, 2024 at 6:30 AM EDT

By Claudia Sahm

Claudia Sahm is the chief economist at New Century Advisors and a former Federal Reserve economist. She is the creator of the Sahm rule, a recession indicator.

Sign of the times.
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images North America

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One day last month, 818,000 jobs vanished from the US economy. Or did they? It would be more accurate to say that the government revised its official estimate of jobs based on new information. While noteworthy, this preliminary revision shouldn’t undermine its credibility.

What happened is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a statement that 818,000 fewer nonfarm payroll jobs (or 0.5% of the total) were likely created from March 2023 to March 2024 than it had previously announced. This led some partisans to charge that the bureau had been “cooking the books” for political purposes.