The First Trump Era Jobs Report

As I said earlier this week, we will see what kind of changes occur in the monthly job reports under the new administration.  I am hoping Elon’s genius programmers can figure out how to get better real-time data than that offered by low-response rate surveys of employers and households.  And the January report was always going to be interesting because it revises everything based on updated estimates of the population and its components; in particular this year, the effect of massive illegal immigration.  And indeed, the report is interesting in that regard.  On a headline basis, jobs growth was a little short of expectations, although no one really knew what to expect, but the unemployment rate was also lower than expectations.

November and December job gains were revised upward.  On the household survey, the population size saw a dramatic rise, with the labor force and number of employed workers both rising by over 2 million people.  The gap between the business survey and household survey has largely closed with these revisions.  But the revisions also show that the Bidementia administration was in constantly exaggerating job growth all of 2024 leading up to the election, but then suddenly stopped when the election was over.  Notably, there were 600,000 fewer job gains in 2024 than Bidementia previously reported.

Health care and social assistance were major areas of job gains, both heavily government-funding,  And governments, including the federal government, had job gains, but that is due to reverse one would imagine, potentially dramatically.  In somewhat bad news on the inflation front, wages rose at a higher-than-anticipated 4.1%, although that is obviously good news for workers, if they can keep ahead of inflation.     (BLS Report)