In records going back to 1979, the average monthly change to the jobs figures (either up or down) is 57,000, according to the BLS., external
But revisions tend to get bigger during times of economic turmoil.
Aside from the most recent numbers and the 2020 Covid period, there have been eight other occasions since 2000 when the BLS revised down monthly job numbers by more than 100,000 – with most of these coming around the 2008 financial crisis.
For instance, there was a 143,000 reduction to the January 2009 figure when President Barack Obama was in office.
The BLS also said job gains for the entire year in 2009 were 902,000 lower than it first estimated – the largest full-year revision on record., external
The jobs created in 2024 under President Joe Biden were revised down by 598,000, though that was a smaller change than the more than 800,000 initially estimated – an update which also caused political fallout.
Prof Abraham says updates are part of the process and she was not surprised to see such large revisions for May and June, given increased difficulty of collecting responses and lack of investment in new methods – and the wider slowdown in the economy, driven in part by new tariffs.
“It’s always difficult when you’re at a point where things may be changing and then you add to that the fact that staffing has been constrained and the agencies haven’t had the resources to invest in following up with respondents the way they might have in the past,” she says.