The U.S. economy has created millions of jobs since 2022, but the pace of hiring wasn’t quite as strong as it seemed.
New calculations by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found the U.S. added 306,000 fewer jobs from March 2022 to March 2023 than originally reported. That works out to 25,500 fewer new hires a month.
The economy created an average of 312,000 jobs a month from March 2022 to March 2023 instead 337,000, the revised figures show.
Yet even after the revisions, employment growth was quite impressive. The U.S. still generated 3.74 million jobs in that 12-month period.
By contrast, the economy was adding about 2 million jobs a year before the pandemic.
Economists say it doesn’t alter the broader picture of the U.S. economy.
“The revised payrolls data are more consistent with evidence of a softening labor market in late 2022 and early 2023, like higher layoff announcements and jobless claims,” said chief economist Bill Adams of Comerica. ” But even with downward revisions, employment was growing rapidly in the year through March.”
Full details of the BLS revisions won’t be available until early next year. The BLS updates its employment estimates annually after rechecking its numbers vs. unemployment filings and government tax records.
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