Nearly a million ‘phantom’ jobs vanish from US payrolls — worry for America, relief for Trump

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has said that the economy added nearly a million fewer jobs between March 2024 and March 2025. While that would be concerning for the economy, it would be music to President Donald Trump’s ears.

In its annual ‘benchmarking’ exercise, the BLS said that 911,000 fewer jobs were added to the economy in the year ending March 2025. The downward revision —way above the projected downward revision of around 700,000— was the worst in 25 years.

Sectors like leisure and hospitality (-176,000), professional services (-158,000), and retail (-126,000) took the biggest hits, as per the downward revision.

“On a raw basis, -911K is worse than any figure, preliminary or final, seen since at least 2000. On a percentage basis, the revision was -0.6 per cent, in line with the preliminary benchmark revision we saw for 2009, not exactly a great comp,” Omair Sharif, President of Inflation Insights, was quoted as saying by Sherwood News.

Even as this revision is huge, such a revision exercise is annual affair and is called ‘benchmarking’. The exercise takes place as BLS’ monthly reports are essentially estimates. Once a year, the BLS reconciles these estimates with records from state unemployment offices to get more accurate figures.

Fewer jobs are bad for economy, good for Trump

As the time period covered by the BLS’ revision covers the final months of former President Joe Biden’s term as well, Trump would likely use the revision to advance his claim that the poor state of economy is not his doing but that of his predecessor.

Trump would also use it to pressure the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. There have been signals from the Fed that poor jobs data could lead to rate cuts.

Fed Governor Christopher J Waller last month cited the benchmark revision —the report had not yet been published— as one reason that he supported cutting interest rates at the central bank’s meeting later this month.

Now, after the downward annual revision of 911,000 jobs and poor monthly job reports lately, the case for rate cuts has become stronger.

In August, the economy just added 22,000 jobs compared to the projection of 75,000 jobs and the unemployment rose to four-year-high of 4.3 per cent. Previously, the July job report revised May’s new jobs to 19,000 from 144,000 that were initially reported and June’s new jobs to 14,000 from 147,000.

‘The economy is weakening’: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon

As job growth has reduced to a trickle and all economic metrics are worsening, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has said the economy is weakening.

“I think the economy is weakening. Whether it’s on the way to recession or just weakening, I don’t know,” said Dimon, according to CNBC.

Dimon said that there needs to be a ‘wait and watch’ approach for now as “there’s a lot of different factors in the economy right now”.

The Fed will “probably” reduce rates at its next meeting later this month though that might not “be consequential to the economy”, Dimon said.