By The talking points from Democrats during 2023 and 2024 that the economy was roaring was all built on a lie. The Bureau of Labor Statistics unveiled new revisions today that erased nearly a million jobs from previously reported figures, painting a far weaker picture of the labor market during the final year of the Biden administration. The preliminary benchmark adjustment, covering April 2024 through March 2025, cut 911,000 positions—an unprecedented downward revision if confirmed in February 2026. It would be the largest annual correction in U.S. employment history, undercutting one of Biden’s central claims of economic strength, according to multiple reports.
The recalibration follows last week’s weak August jobs report and lands amid intensifying criticism that the BLS has misled policymakers and the public. Critics, including Trump administration officials, argue that faulty data gave Americans a false sense of stability while the economy faltered. “Overall, this shows that the jobs market is in an even more precarious position than we thought,” Sarah House, senior economist with Wells Fargo told CNN. “This doesn’t tell us anything explicitly about hiring over the past few months, but it does suggest that we’re already on a much weaker setting heading into what’s been a rougher stretch since.”
If spread evenly across the 12-month span, the revision cuts average monthly job growth from 146,500 to just 70,500. That collapse in hiring momentum—nearly 76,000 jobs per month erased—shatters the narrative of a resilient Biden economy and raises new questions about wages, consumer spending, and the underlying strength of the recovery.
The errors stem largely from the BLS’s reliance on models disrupted by pandemic volatility, especially the so-called birth-death model, which estimates jobs created by new firms and lost to closures. Analysts say it has struggled to track business churn in a post-COVID economy.
Employer survey response rates have also dropped in what Barron’s has described as a “slow-moving train wreck.” The revisions hit multiple sectors, including a loss of 226,000 jobs in trade, transportation, and utilities, and a 67,000 decline in information services. “This is quite like challenges in adjusting data following the years following the Great Financial Crisis,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. “The BLS birth-death model has well know issues in capturing declines in business formation and bankruptcies especially around mid-cycle corrections and end of business cycle dynamics.”
Unlike the monthly surveys, the annual revision draws on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which relies on unemployment insurance tax records. That dataset is more comprehensive but delayed, exposing how preliminary estimates can diverge dramatically from reality in times of rapid change.
The findings triggered a political storm. President Donald Trump last month dismissed BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, accusing her of manipulating jobs reports. Today’s revision has only amplified his charges. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tied the announcement directly to Biden’s failures. “This is exactly why we need new leadership to restore trust and confidence in the BLS’s data on behalf of the financial markets, businesses, policymakers, and families that rely on this data to make major decisions,” Leavitt said. She added that Trump “was right” to say “Biden’s economy was a disaster and the BLS is broken.”
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer echoed the attack, saying on X that “Leaders at the bureau failed to improve their practices during the Biden administration, utilizing outdated methods that rendered a once reliable system completely ineffective and calling into question the motivation behind their inaction.” She pledged that Trump’s team “are putting a stop to years of neglect.”
Today’s massive downward revision gives the American people even more reason to doubt the integrity of data being published by @BLS_gov.
It’s imperative for the data to remain accurate, impartial, and never altered for political gain.
Leaders at the bureau failed to improve… https://t.co/DwOeH8NxFR
— Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer (@SecretaryLCD) September 9, 2025
Trump’s nominee to lead the BLS, Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni, faces stiff opposition, but administration officials are pressing for sweeping reforms.
For the Federal Reserve, the revision complicates already fraught deliberations on interest rates. And for the country, it raises a stark conclusion: the Biden economy was weaker than reported, obscured by the very agency tasked with tracking it. Whether the Trump administration can restore the BLS’s credibility—or deepen its politicization—will shape the next chapter of America’s economic story.
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