WASHINGTON, D.C. – New numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show the job market is weaker than previously reported. The new stats show the US added nearly a million fewer jobs than previously estimated from last year until early this year.
“Normally when the government downward revises the numbers it does suggest there’s been a change in direction of the economy,” said Scott Siff, founder and CEO of Pivoters, job-matching platform aimed at 55+ workers that is launching in Fall 2025. “It does suggest there’s a negative trend in the job creation market.”
Siff said there is a lot of complicated forces behind the latest BLS numbers. “There are two sides of what’s going on here,” said Siff. “There’s a supply and demand side and that’s how markets work. The job market is no different. There’s the job creation numbers which these numbers are focused on. They’re about job creation, but you also have the worker supply side and that’s where something really interesting is going on. The Labor Department also just reported there are 7.2 million jobs that are unfilled, so while it’s true the job market may be creating fewer jobs than it has been in the past, there are still a huge number of jobs that are unfilled.”
We asked Sam Caucci, CEO of 1Huddle, an AI-powered platform that gamifies employee training and tracks workforce trends, if there are solutions to the latest report from BLS:
“There is a remedy we see organizations we see starting to put into action and it has to do with cross-skilling workers where they are,” said Caucci. “No doubt a softening of the jobs market is a reflection of employers reducing the number of new hires coming on board. It’s also an indicator of layoffs and terminations of roles. Companies are trying to be more efficient; they’re trying to win with maybe less resources than they have.”
Caucci said they are seeing organizations investing more on developing their existing workers. “The ones that are finding their way through this storm ahead are making the conscious decision to invest in resources to make sure people have not just the ability to do the job they’re in but maybe their job that’s to their left and their right,” said Caucci.
The White House is blaming former President Joe Biden for these numbers. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shared this statement: “Biden’s economy was a disaster and the BLS is broken,” said Leavitt. “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.”
The report comes after a tense time between the Trump administration and the BLS. The President recently fired the head of BLS after a couple of negative reports released by the agency.
“Certainly Donald Trump is not going to like these numbers and he’s going to ask for another revision but at the same point, it actually helps him a little bit in terms of his fight with the Federal Reserve Board,” said Dr. Todd Belt, professor and director of political management at George Washington University. “If the economy is stagnant, then this gives more of an emphasis on the argument to try to goose the economy a little bit by lowering that interest rate, which is what Donald Trump has been asking for ever since he got into office.”
The BLS final jobs numbers should be completed by early 2026.
