What's actually being tracked by people using this data is the delta from previous years -- which, conditioning on the same collection methodology etc -- is more reliable.
The actionable piece of info is sign(delta)
Yes, they do publish them, but it is disappointing their primary releases do not have them.
As a data scientist/generic programmer now, I don't really see them anywhere. I remember a colleague during my postdoc saying 'don't worry, no error bars in industry' when I asked about regression with ML lol
The problem is that small businesses lag by 1-2 months reporting them, so the initial number being reported is almost always irrelevant, as it mostly applies to numbers coming out of larger corporations.
That doesn't mean they don't warrant error bars.
Error bars aren't there to show that you didn't do a good job collecting the data, they're there to show your level of uncertainty.
It is literally calling/writing 60,000 people and asking "are you employed? did you look for a job? Etc."
"How the government calculates unemployment" [0]
| Does anyone in this household have a business or a farm? | Last week, did you do any work for (either) pay (or profit)? | If the answer to question 1 is "yes" and the answer to question 2 is "no," the next question is: | Last week, did you do any unpaid work in the family business or farm? | For those who reply "no" to both questions 2 and 3, the next key questions used to determine employment status are: | Last week, (in addition to the business) did you have a job, either full or part time? Include any job from which you were temporarily absent. | Last week, were you on layoff from a job? | What was the main reason you were absent from work last week? | For those who respond "yes" to question 5 about being on layoff, the following questions are asked:
-whispering to self-
"carry the 2... oh no this can't be good"
-pencil noises-
I solved the equation!!!
We must lay off 1 million more, it is the only way to fix the interest rate!
You guys care about the interest rate don't you???
No more jobs until the books are balanced!!!
We have to it's the only way
Can't have the plebes unionizing or getting more compensation.
in the meantime stock market is going to do another major boom cycle
> in the meantime stock market is going to do another major boom cycle
Citation needed
it's all about optics for mid term.
This is chickens coming home to roost from US actions in Iran, with tariffs, and other things introducing economic uncertainty.
As you alluded to; this is terrible for Republicans in power. And quite useful for Democrats.
As far as the government is concerned if you have been looking for a job for so long and/or are so discouraged that you stop looking, then you are no longer "unemployed" since you are not looking for a job.
If you are software engineer who has not been able find a software job, and are now flipping burgers to at least have some income, then you have also dropped off the government stats since you now have a job.
And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything, and threatening anyone who doesn't support his lies, and it seems we have truly entered a post-truth world where "alternate facts" rule the day.
When you read headlines of companies laying off thousands of employees, that's real. When the government says they've retroactively adjusted their seasonally adjusted fake news, then not so much.
> In yet another troubling sign for the labor market, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that it revised down the prior two months by a combined 103,000. May’s jobs total was cut by 66,000 to 129,000 total jobs added, while June’s total was lowered by 37,000 to a total gain of 57,000.
> Gains were focused on the private sector, with strength in wholesale and retail trade, finance and insurance, and professional and scientific services. Public sector jobs fell by 14,500 amid an official bid to cut government spending.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-can...
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=361007...
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260807/dq260...
Private-sector jobs: +58,000 jobs [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Government/public-sector jobs:-27,000 jobs (a decline) [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Self-employed: +44,000 jobs [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Part-time jobs: +36,600 jobs [money.usnews.com], [ca.finance.yahoo.com]
I began rapidly recalling the hundreds of sources foreseeing this well in advance, citing it, raising alarm, and being ignored.
I guess we are supposed to take numbers at face value, disregard what generated them and why, accept what they imply as presented, and never question it.
Then we must patiently withhold intelligence, wait for sanctioned admission, then finally consider what we already knew.
Suddenly, Rome collapsed.
Edit: Don't take the flagging to heart. If you dig, you will find a thousand exceptions made where the single-word comment fit the narrative and endured. This comment will be flagged too.
Lateral Thinkers: quietly sipping tea, nursing our wounds from layoffs, lamenting another unheard Cassandra moment.
Basically sums up the mood, I find. Don’t worry, we’re always steeping a fresh pot for the new club members when stories like these hit the wire.
This is one of the major things that has helped explain why US consumer sentiment has been so out of step with headline numbers like employment, consumer spending, and GDP.
It also helps explain why there's so many economists are saying they see limited evidence of a "K-shaped economy", and say they see positive numbers throughout the distribution. It's very difficult to choose not to buy healthcare.
Any sector that's resistant to productivity growth is liable to become bigger and bigger part of the economy.
in fairness also regulation makes it hard when it specificies the solutions not the parameters (just to illustrate the idea not an actual rule: you must have X thickness of PVC versus your pipe must withstand X pressure)
U.S. healthcare is a giant predatory clusterfuck and seems impossible to meaningfully reform.
Americans of all ages are spending more on healthcare, and seeking more healthcare interventions than in previous decades.
(Unemployment also generally causes lower inflation in general, at least according to the prevailing macroeconomic school of thought.)
Folks keep predicting it. Maybe it's starting?
I'm not actually suggesting there's a good reason for market swings, just that bad news shouldn't necessarily cause the market to go down.
It's usually people who don't understand the context or assign appropriate weights to events and allow randomness that complain about not understanding markets.
But I have to inform you all that we are in a period of stagflation and there is no way out but pain for someone. Either the asset holders or the regular people who need to buy things.
We also have 4.8 million that are part-time employed, but want full-time work. That’s up from 4.7 million last month, and up from 4.5 million in June 2025, and up further from 4.2 million in June 2024.
There’s also 6.0 million that want a job, but aren’t employed. This is the same as June 2025, but up by 800,000 since June 2024.
So if you take the U-3 number (what’s reported) then factor in the other two figures, you really have 10.5% that are unemployed, discouraged, or underemployed.
—
The other question never answered is, “How many jobs are needed to create equilibrium?”, or where the employment rate remains stable. That’s NEVER talked about by media or the BLS, but it’s actually not difficult to get an approximate answer.
You’d want to look at population growth rates for 18-22 years ago (as those people would now be entering the workforce), multiply that by the labor force participation rate, and then divide as appropriate for the period. Typically, the US economy would need 140,000 - 145,000 new seasonally-adjusted jobs created every month to maintain a steady employment rate, given its historic and current population growth rates.
Yes, it's called people getting older and retiring. It's pretty obvious that's the cause if you compare the labor force participation rate overall vs for 25-54 year olds.
Are most teachers considered and counted as unemployed during summner break? All the teachers I know are paid 12 months a year. 10-month appointments are seen in colleges and universities but even there professors often have grants that pay for their research in the summer and even if not I don't think I'd consider them "unemployed" in the summer.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen underemployment charts too that seemed to track something like “people with degrees or certifications outside their field”.
They don’t normally make headlines, though. The charts and stats for those are clearly for economists and not formatted to make good headlines on the news.
> ...
>When you read headlines of companies laying off thousands of employees, that's real. When the government says they've retroactively adjusted their seasonally adjusted fake news, then not so much.
The BLS keeps track of the discouraged workers as well, and it's not significantly different than previous trends.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/alternative-...
>And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything, and threatening anyone who doesn't support his lies, and it seems we have truly entered a post-truth world where "alternate facts" rule the day.
You don't see the irony here with what you're doing?
Sorry, is OP the POTUS, speaking with Presidential authority and threatening federal employees with termination of employment for their political beliefs? The fact you think they're wrong is not a reason to equate their comment to Trump's actions.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-seeks-to-fire-bu...
And I suspect, sometime in the future, we're going to discover that the numbers were even worse than we thought they were—were covered up.
And when a vast majority of the population isn't working what do these numbers really tell us? If we have fewer jobs, but then the people doing those jobs are paid more and thus paying more in taxes, maybe the jobs numbers don't even matter (I'm not sure that's true, just for arguments sake).
And let's say they were covered up. Ok and what does that change? Are people who already hate Donald Trump going to vote harder and then, what? Pursue the same economic policy? Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.
I'd suspect better computing helps a lot here.
https://xcancel.com/ernietedeschi/status/1951721848393105573
ADP Payrolls are a lower latency indicator but not quite as broad.
Economics is an imperfect science.
no citation needed, its common knowledge that rates drive stock market by acting as a gate to control money flowing between money market and stock market but to explain that is really not my responsibility, a very worrying sign that many Americans are seemingly not aware how much of sway the Federal Reserve play on the global economy.
It looks to me like a failure of the American media landscape, that such constant revisal trends are not called out in the reporting of new numbers. That just makes them a mouthpiece of the government.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/05/economy/cpi-data-bls-reductio...
All of these have led to conditions where it is expected for an entire house to go from start to finish in 100 days. A house with very high standards of plumbing, electrical, hvac, insulation, and other essentials compared to previous generations.
This is the most obvious point in favor of this perspective, especially as it being an escalation by the current president and his administration. It hardly even seems to be a cynical take. At least, the cynicism is being used appropriately, as a tool to guide one's thoughts rather than being the entire argument.
One can look at the DOGE cuts, tally up the numbers, and see for themself that the stated reason (desired reduction of spending that is orders of magnitude higher than what they've actually cut) can't be the actual reason for these cuts. Coupled with the... less than candid statements from this administration about anything and everything the past 17 months (hey, has anyone heard about these "Epstein files"?), the most logical conclusion is that they are deceptive whenever it suits them. And yes, even the nominally-objective numbers need to come attached with a reason to be trusted; we already know a litany of ways they can be manipulated (meaning they are indeed "nominally" objective, and have been for a long time); they can't be reasonably taken at face value.
All basketball players are tall, but that doesn't mean that all tall people are basketball players.
If the taxes were being spent to help those who were not working (unable to or for whatever reason) maybe that would be fine. We might take in more taxes, but when we cut funding for childhood cancer research, and build more missiles... is this really the way we want our money spent?
> Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.
Perhaps there was more overlap 10 years ago, but... that "both sides are just as bad" doesn't seem to ring true.
Moot point as the people who actually act on the data understand how to roll their own anyway.
If the error bars are large, that is important information to know.
Is it the case that the numbers always appear more optimistic, and then are revised to be more pessimistic values? Or is it just that the original numbers are off and are revised? Does that make sense?
Chart: https://xcancel.com/ernietedeschi/status/1951721848393105573
And for good reason! These are surveys. The easiest respondents are those saying “no change.” The latest responses, the ones who had the biggest change. In a booming economy, the biggest changes will be hires. In a troubled one, the biggest changes will be those doing lay-offs.
Add to that: the BLS tries to correct for this effect. Which means at the moment the economy turns, its corrections skew the wrong way. (On the whole, per the above chart, the figures are getting better over time.)
Still waiting. Just find me one article that says "Last months BLS jobs were revised higher".
i.e. young americans are spending more on health care than young americans used to, even if it's also true that there are fewer young americans now, and more old americans.
In 1860 someone who went to a doctor would have worse outcomes than someone who stayed home. As medicine gets better over time there is more and more value in seeing a doctor. In turn more an more people are talking to their doctor about things that they would have just ignored a few generations ago. Sometimes this results in unnecessary treatment, but it also results in catching and fixing a lot of real problems that would have made life worse before we could treat it.
Americans are spending a lot more on quality-of-life medical interventions, many of which are outside the normal standard of care that would be covered by healthcare systems. It is a booming business in the US and many people seem to have no trouble paying for it.
My main caveat / counter point is that preventative care may actually increase as more and more people jump on the live for ever, dont die, longevity hacking trend.
For a concrete example, as you request: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/05/jobs-report-may-2026.html
> In addition to the strong jobs numbers for May, revisions for prior months also presented an even better picture. The April tally represented an upward revision of 64,000, while March got a boost up to 214,000, a gain of 29,000.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/business/economy/trump-jo...
> What has been unusual during the early months of Mr. Trump’s term is that the revisions have been consistently in the same direction: down.
You do not know how to read a graph, it seems.
(The UK spends very roughly half of what the US spends on healthcare in terms of percentage of GDP. That's total (public plus private) expenditure. Singapore spends very roughtly half of what the UK spends by the same measure. Health outcomes amongst the three countries are comparable. If anything, Singapore is healthier.)
People run to dismiss this with "well we need a different system then", but the problem is a fundamental one on par with "eating your cake and having it too".
The only way to get as close as possible to "good" healthcare is to have enough money to pay for everything out of pocket.
i softly agree but also think that a body does not need to generate value to pay for the costs in order for the whole process to sustain itself. Monitoring the stars for asteroids heading towards earth provides no market value, for example, but we can still afford to do it. so it's a matter of cost and available expenditure. the market is not net 0, so its possible to generate enough value to have enough to afford healthcare as an expense as a society
what are the costs of fixing a body? The residency pipeline is a bottleneck on labor, but assuming that gets sorted out and AI is capable of guiding any reasonable person through the process, why cant the cost of labor for a doctor drop dramatically?
i would guess limited resources are the biggest blockage, but i dont know how to break down a $20k hospital bill for giving birth into its actual costs. its hard to believe that really needs to be $20k.
I actually think its the opposite. there is so much friction with healthcare and the process of healing is slow enough that costs are inflated because the overall operating cost for the entire facility including rent, ER, having people on standby, who knows what else, all need to be recovered through whatever volume they process and they arent processing as quickly as the resources are able.
healthcare needs do not subscribe to a neat work schedule, and so we have to pay a lot of market prices to have the right availability at all times. but thats not a true cost, it is a result of accounting and underutilization
Now, almost every woman I'm related to is in health care.
I've been joking for years that eventually everyone will either be in the hospital, or working there.
If you have any resources you can recommend on immigrating to Singapore that would be helpful and relevant for folks considering it as an option (whether on an employment, student, or pension/non lucrative visa), I welcome them to add to my resources for distribution. Thank you in advance.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161587 (resources)
I love it in Singapore, but if you don't want to live in a steam sauna, there are better countries for you. And if you are an American, I guess you don't even benefit from our more enlightened tax system anyway.