Given the 8% decline in labor demand since March, we are forecasting that June job gains will be revised to -25,000 assuming, of course, that we even see downward revisions ever again.
With the firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer and the likely appointment and confirmation of E.J. Antoni, July’s jobs report marks the high-water mark, from here on out, for trustworthiness in U.S. jobs data. Even as chronic underfunding and rapidly declining response rates in the covid era degraded efficacy, no one questioned the integrity of the agency and its commitment to trying to produce the most accurate reports possible under increasingly difficult circumstances. Alas, no longer.
And what a report it was that marks the end of reliable BLS data. More worrisome than the underwhelming job gains last month, gains that we expect will be (or at least should be) revised downward further in subsequent months, were the gigantic downward revision by a combined 258,000 jobs for May and June.