The U.S. economy added almost one million fewer jobs in the year leading up to March 2025 than previously reported, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The revision, the largest in the agency’s history, slashes job growth for that period by more than half, from 1.8 million to just 850,000.
The preliminary benchmark revision released Tuesday shows payrolls were overstated by 911,000 jobs, or 0.6 percent.
Instead of averaging 147,000 jobs a month, the economy was creating barely 70,000.
The downward revision spans nearly every major industry and most states.
Wholesale and retail trade led the shortfall, followed by hospitality, professional services, and manufacturing. Information jobs were cut by more than 2 percent, the steepest reduction in percentage terms.
The new data dramatically reshapes the picture of the economy at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Far from inheriting a historically strong labor market, Trump stepped into office with an economy already weaker than the Biden administration claimed.
Biden officials repeatedly touted the numbers that have now been discredited.
In June 2024, top White House economist Jared Bernstein told The New York Times it was “beyond question that this is one of the strongest labor markets that we’ve ever seen.”
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell declared in December that the economy was “performing very, very well.”
Both relied on payroll data that was inflated by nearly a million phantom jobs.
At the time, voters brushed off claims of a “booming” labor market, citing inflation and cost-of-living struggles.
The new revisions suggest Americans weren’t overlooking strength; they were sensing weakness hidden by faulty government statistics.
The numbers also raise questions about whether the Federal Reserve miscalculated policy under Biden.
The Fed cut interest rates three times in late 2024, banking on supposedly robust job growth.
But with revisions showing the market was already faltering, and unemployment now climbing to 4.3 percent — a four-year high — critics argue the central bank was behind the curve.
This marks the second massive revision in as many years.
In February, the BLS admitted it had overstated job growth through March 2024 by nearly 600,000.
Now, with a new 911,000-job correction, the pattern looks less like an anomaly and more like systemic failure.
The repeated errors have intensified scrutiny of the agency itself.
Last month, President Trump removed BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, citing the staggering revisions.
Trump accused McEntarfer of pushing a “rigged” jobs report.
He has nominated economist E.J. Antoni, a longtime critic of the bureau’s methodology, to replace her.
The latest revision does not alter data after March 2025, but when combined with recent weak reports — just 22,000 jobs in August — it points to a labor market deteriorating faster, and from a weaker base, than forecasters believed.
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