The official count of payroll jobs at the end of 2025 was revised downward by more than 1 million on Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Previously, the agency estimated that payroll jobs totaled 159,526,000 in December. Now, it said the number is 158,497,000.
The downward correction, which was included as part of the monthly jobs report, is the largest such revision in the past decade.
The major revision suggests that hiring has not been as strong in recent times as previously thought. Average monthly payroll growth for 2025 was revised down from roughly 50,000 to 15,000.
The revisions show that 2025 was “an exceptionally weak year by almost any standard,” Laura Ullrich, director of economic research for the Indeed Hiring Lab, wrote in a note on the release. “There are now real doubts about how long the broader economy can continue to power forward with the job market at an almost complete standstill outside of the essential healthcare sector.”
The revised numbers raise the prospect of renewed scrutiny of the BLS by President Donald Trump, who fired the BLS commissioner in August after the release of a monthly jobs report that showed negative revisions to previous months’ gains.
Wednesday’s revision is a “benchmark” revision. It is made once a year and differs from revisions to past months’ job numbers, which are regularly included in the monthly jobs reports.
Instead, it is part of an annual process for adjusting the estimates of payroll jobs, which are based on the monthly survey of establishments. The BLS rebenchmarks those numbers against a comprehensive count of jobs from the BLS’s Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, a quarterly assessment of employment and wages reported by employers that covers more than 95% of U.S. jobs.
Recent years have seen unusually large revisions due to several factors that have made it more difficult to obtain accurate numbers.
One is falling response rates, which worsened over the years and then rapidly fell following the pandemic.
The other is the major distortions created by the massive influx of illegal immigrants during former President Joe Biden’s tenure. Illegal immigration employment, for example, might appear in the survey of establishments reported in the monthly jobs report but not in the QCEW.
THE THREE HOUSE REPUBLICANS WHO BUCKED TRUMP ON TARIFFS
In August of last year, Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a weak jobs report that showed major downward revisions, calling it “rigged.”
He then nominated Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni as a replacement, but later withdrew the nomination after it appeared that Antoni would have difficulty clearing the Senate. Last month, he nominated Brett Matsumoto from the White House Council of Economic Advisers to head the agency.
