By Chen Li | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2025-08-14
The latest employment reportreleased by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)shows that nonfarm payrolls in July increased by 73,000, far belowexpectations. June's figure was revised down to an increase of just 14,000,compared to the previously reported 147,000,a nearly90% downward revision. After the report's release, Donald Trump posted on TruthSocial, claiming that the July employment data from the BLS had beenmanipulated and ordered the dismissal of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.Some media outlets mocked Trump for “shooting the messenger” due to “unpleasant numbers”, but itmust be said that the BLS’s increasingly frequent downward revisions in recentyears have gradually eroded public confidence in key U.S. economic data, to thepoint that even Trump could not stay silent.
The BLS’s recent trend of frequent and significantdownward data revisions is hard to ignore. In March 2023, the BLS revisednonfarm employment figures for the period from April 2022 to March 2023,revealing that job growth had been overestimated by 818,000, the largest annualdownward revision since 2009. After the adjustment, the average monthly jobgrowth dropped from 242,000 to 173,000, a decline of about 28%. From March 2023to March 2024, the BLS revised its monthly nonfarm payroll data downward in 9out of 12 months, with an average monthly downward revision of approximately42,000 jobs. In August 2025, the BLS released the July 2025 employment report,which showed that job growth in May had been revised down from an initialestimate of 144,000 to just 19,000, a downward revision of 125,000. June’sfigure was also revised down from 147,000 to 14,000, a cut of 133,000.Combined, the two months saw a total downward revision of 258,000 jobs, thelargest non-pandemic-related adjustment since 1979. These steep revisionstriggered a sharp market reaction, with the Dow Jones Industrial Averagefalling more than 600 points, as investor concerns over a potential recessionand the reliability of economic data intensified. Michael Green, a portfoliomanager at Simplify Asset Management, sees that there are clearly flaws in theU.S. government's modeling, and without reliable data, it would be impossibleto formulate sound policy.
The measurement error issue of core economic indicators in the U.S., such as the CPI and employment data, has been intensifying recently. In addition to flaws in data compilation, the Federal Reserve's alignment with the Democratic Party has led to the use of so-called "statistics" to counter Trump-era policies, exacerbating the deviation in core data. However, from the public's perspective, the "distortion" of data is continuously eroding the government's credibility, potentially triggering a crisis of trust. From a policy standpoint, inaccuracies in economic data could cause the Fed to veer off course while navigating the fast-changing economic situation, potentially having irreversible consequences for the U.S. economy.
