Worst Revision In History: BLS Admits A Record 911K Fewer Jobs Were Added

Two weeks ago, before both Bloomberg and Reuters, we told our subscribers to “brace for another huge negative payrolls revision”…

Brace For Another Huge Negative Payrolls Revision, Greenlighting A 50bps September Rate Cut https://t.co/RKJXliyrVq

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 29, 2025

… and just like one year ago when we did exactly the same, we were spot on: moments ago the BLS reported that as part of its preliminary annual benchmark revisions, a record 911K payrolls for the period April 2024-March 2025 would be revised away.

Some more from the full press release:

The preliminary estimate of the Current Employment Statistics (CES) national benchmark revision to total nonfarm employment for March 2025 is -911,000 (-0.6 percent), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The annual benchmark revisions over the last 10 years have an absolute average of 0.2 percent of total nonfarm employment. In accordance with usual practice, the final benchmark revision will be issued in February 2026 with the publication of the January 2026 Employment Situation news release.

Each year, CES employment estimates are benchmarked to comprehensive counts of employment from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW). These counts are derived primarily from state unemployment insurance (UI) tax records that nearly all employers are required to file with state workforce agencies. 

What is more remarkable about today’s print is that after last year’s stunning 818K negative revision, which was the second biggest since the global financial crisis (and which we also warned ahead of time was coming), virtually nobody expected this year’s number to be higher. It was not only higher, but it was the biggest negative revision on record!

No wonder the WSJ now reports that “White House Prepares Report Critical of Statistics Agency” in what is a clear effort at kitchen-sinking all the ugly, fake jobs numbers that were “created” by the Biden admin, and saddled Trump with relentless negative revisions. Expect 1-2 more months of painful job prints, and then another powerful rally higher into the 2026 midterms under a new BLS commissioner as all of Biden’s fake baggage is expunged. 

So what does it all mean? Couple things and we will follow up with a more extended analysis but here is the punchline:

Trump was absolutely correct to fire the BLS commissioner one month ago: one year of major negative revisions is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action… and in her case, it was just unexcusable incompetence as the most important economic data point the market uses was dead wrong. 
There was virtually no domestic job creation in the last year of the Biden admin when one excludes the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who entered the work force. 
The Fed should have started cutting rates in February, and would have started cutting rates in February if it knew the true sad state of the US labor market.

Just as remarkable: 2 million jobs from the last 3 years of the Biden admin have now been revised away. 

One thing that will never be revised away, however, is the trillions in debt accumulated over his period, and which we now learn encumbered future generations of Americans with massive amounts of debt only to create far fewer jobs than initially reported.

And again, ZeroHedge subs knew all this two weeks ahead of time: to stay ahead of the curve, please consider subscribing.