“The latest economic data—which are wholly unaffected by today’s preliminary revisions—suggest the labor market is weakening for all workers,” Elise Gould and Ben Zipperer, senior economists at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote via the nonprofit. “Job growth has been especially weak since May. Household survey rates also point to falling prime-age Black employment and higher unemployment for US-born workers.”
HR Brew
September 11, 2025
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, explains that the BLS asks employers how many people are on their payroll, then estimates what that means for job growth/losses in that month. Each year, the BLS benchmarks those payroll numbers against the “universe” of unemployment insurance tax records. This week, they released their preliminary estimate, and in February, they’ll come out with their final benchmark estimate.
The revision suggests that the economy at the end of President Biden’s term was not as rosy as initially thought. “Growth was about half as fast as when initially reported, and yes, most of the data covers 2024,” Gould says.
KCRW
September 11, 2025
“We know this is the case because it’s happened back in 2008 post-recovery, but we also know that it happened right around the very beginning of COVID-19 where I think Black women’s unemployment shot up to 17% or around that, according to the Economic Policy Institute,” said Opoku-Agyeman. “So we really need to be paying attention to Black women in particular.”
Marketplace
September 11, 2025
“These numbers are likely to anger President Trump and the White House, who incorrectly view revised data as political manipulation,” wrote Elise Gould and Ben Zipperer, economists at the Economic Policy Institute, in a post on the report.
The Mirror US (via MSN)
September 10, 2025
“These numbers are likely to anger President Trump and the White House,” wrote economists Elise Gould and Ben Zipperer at the Economic Policy Institute. They noted the revisions are “part of the regular, transparent process to update employment counts with the most comprehensive data possible” and are based on additional survey data from companies.
“Punishing the messenger will only further damage the federal data infrastructure and cloud our ability to understand the state of the economy,” they wrote.
Courthouse News Service
September 10, 2025
“These numbers are likely to anger President Trump and the White House who incorrectly view revised data as political manipulation,” wrote Elise Gould and Ben Zipperer, economists at the Economic Policy Institute, in a post on the report.
“Trump has already lashed out at BLS, including firing the agency’s commissioner because a jobs report showed a rapidly weakening labor market. But these BLS data revisions are not corrections of mistakes. Revisions are part of the regular, transparent process to update employment counts with the most comprehensive data possible.”
The Guardian
September 10, 2025
“Any political retaliation due to today’s release will harm the ability for BLS to provide timely and unbiased statistics,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Reuters
September 10, 2025
The White House claimed that it shows that “the BLS is broken.”
It showed no such thing. As a helpful post from the Economic Policy Institute says,
These BLS data revisions are not corrections of mistakes. Revisions are part of the regular, transparent process to update employment counts with the most comprehensive data possible.
As the EPI explains, monthly job numbers don’t literally track every job in America. They’re estimates based on a partial survey of employers. We only get comprehensive data from unemployment insurance tax records, which become available once a year. Revising the estimates based on that data is normal and in no sense a sign that the BLS is doing anything wrong.
Paul Krugman Substack
September 10, 2025
However, revisions even of this size “are not corrections of mistakes,” the Economic Policy Institute said in a note published on Tuesday. “Revisions are part of the regular, transparent process to update employment counts with the most comprehensive data possible,” it added.
Newsweek
September 10, 2025