As a data scientist it is very frustrating to see a consistent lack of error bars on these numbers or any discussion about the magnitude of uncertainty around them by all news reports every time these numbers get released
This should have nothing to do with data science but basic math literacy. Quantities without context are meaningless. Reporters should know better but if when headlines have to catchy day in day out … shrugs. Stock market reporters are the worst: a 1000 point drop in the Dow meant a lot more when it was 7000 than it does at 40,000.
If honest, the error bars would be so large as to make drawing conclusions from these numbers seem pointless. Certainly, both jobs growth and jobs loss are within the CI.<p>What's actually being tracked by people using this data is the delta from previous years -- which, conditioning on the same collection methodology etc -- is more reliable.<p>The actionable piece of info is sign(delta)
As a physicist, I always shed a tear when looking at data without error bars.<p>As a data scientist/generic programmer now, I don't really see them anywhere. I remember a colleague during my postdoc saying 'don't worry, no error bars in industry' when I asked about regression with ML lol
The bureau of labor statistics publishes confidence intervals in their reports
Not in their primary news release. A footnote says it is "generally conducted at the 90% interval", but the individual numbers do not have their actual computed error bars.<p>Yes, they do publish them, but it is disappointing their primary releases do not have them.<p><a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf</a>
It’s common in scientific/stats publishing to have the headline state the avg/median, the main text plot the errors, and the supplementary give the explicit numbers. They have a big page about std errors.
NBC wouldn't know how to navigate bls.gov if you put a gun to their head. And it's all downhill from there
Yes! I am aware of this and they are really great. Problem is nobody will ever read that, but they WILL watch Fox News, CNBC, etc. and those outlets never even point out that there <i>are</i> errorbars/uncertainty. Then I hear things like outrage when BLS revises numbers up or down (facepalm).
<a href="https://www.bls.gov/jlt/jltreliability.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/jlt/jltreliability.htm</a>
Read the docs
Oh I’m well aware the BLS knows what they’re doing and publish error bars, they are great. The problem is news articles, no one ever reads BLS reports but they do watch Fox News, CNBC, etc. and those outlets never ever get into uncertainty.
The actual source this comes from has a 90% confidence interval in the published number. When people talk about the economy gaining or losing jobs they are talking about the bureau of labor statistics "nonfarm payroll" number. The methodology and a lot more are on the bls website<p><a href="https://www.bls.gov/ces/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/ces/</a>
The numbers are as good as they can get with hard manual work that goes into compiling them.<p>The problem is that small businesses lag by 1-2 months reporting them, so the initial number being reported is almost always irrelevant, as it mostly applies to numbers coming out of larger corporations.
> The numbers are as good as they can get<p>That doesn't mean they don't warrant error bars.<p>Error bars aren't there to show that you didn't do a good job collecting the data, they're there to show your level of uncertainty.
That's true for the establishment survey, but the population survey, where they contact individuals, is what is actually used to calculate these numbers.<p>It is literally calling/writing 60,000 people and asking "are you employed? did you look for a job? Etc."<p>"How the government calculates unemployment" [0]<p>| Does anyone in this household have a business or a farm?
| Last week, did you do any work for (either) pay (or profit)?
| If the answer to question 1 is "yes" and the answer to question 2 is "no," the next question is:
| Last week, did you do any unpaid work in the family business or farm?
| For those who reply "no" to both questions 2 and 3, the next key questions used to determine employment status are:
| Last week, (in addition to the business) did you have a job, either full or part time? Include any job from which you were temporarily absent.
| Last week, were you on layoff from a job?
| What was the main reason you were absent from work last week?
| For those who respond "yes" to question 5 about being on layoff, the following questions are asked:<p>[0] <a href="https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm</a>
You have to wonder, since they are doing two different surveys trying to measure the same reality, which one more accurately measures the facts on the ground? Asking businesses how many people they are employing, or asking households whether or not their folks are working? The numbers don't really match up between the two.
This is very common for economic statistics.<p>GDP too. That's how you can get more accurate information, and you have actual numbers on the discrepencies.<p>They rely on the household data more because it doesn't have as much <i>systemic error</i>, even though it does have more sampling error. Asking businesses gives you a more complete picture, but it has much more bias.<p>Hell, this is why even in <i>accounting</i>, you have double-entry bookkeeping, and even there, <i>the numbers don't always match up.</i><p>Or "my bank account doesn't match up with my cashflow statement".<p>It's not that one is better and you should use that, calculating multiple ways is central to accounting so you can detect errors.
What makes you think it's small businesses? I would assume most businesses doing any reporting at all are using a payroll system. Mine handles the reporting automatically. The kinds of payroll systems used by small businesses can be set up in a day. If anything, small businesses that make even a small effort to stay on top of things have an easier time than big ones with complicated systems and processes.
I think you say “as good as they can get with [the] hard manual work that goes into compiling them” as a way to respect the challenge of the BLS and say they’re doing the best with their resources, but it’s worth pointing out they could be better with more resources.
DOGE hurt them pretty hard: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics posted a notice on Wednesday stating that it stopped collecting data in three not-so-small cities (Lincoln, Nebraska; Buffalo, New York; and Provo, Utah) and increased “imputations” for certain items"<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/05/economy/cpi-data-bls-reductions" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/05/economy/cpi-data-bls-reductio...</a>
Yes they should have said 23.0 * 10^3.
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The BLS has been gutted. It's surprising anything negative is escaping in these reports.
I would hardly call it a sudden reversal, looking at the downward trend in the numbers over the last six months or so.<p><a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/non-farm-payrolls" rel="nofollow">https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/non-farm-payrolls</a>
Given the trend of revisions, I wouldn't be surprised if the real loss is around 6 figures, May 2026 revision went from 172k to 63k.
What happened between February and March?
Apparently there were healthcare strikes in February that depressed the numbers there, which were resolved by March. Also maybe data center and World Cup hospitality hiring. But hard to say. As others have noted, there are big error bands on these numbers.
> The BLS said employment contracted the most in “local government education,” which declined by 50,000 roles, likely reflecting teachers during summer break.<p>This is not entirely accurate. AFAIK, teachers usually remain on payroll throughout the summer. This stat _might_ be talking about contractual teaching roles, like adjuncts or subs, but it's hard to say from that BLS category.
Not to mention, if it's seasonal for any reason then it's something that should be baked into the cyclical expectations already.<p>It's like reporting that Spirit of Halloween employees accounted for the biggest retailer layoffs in November. It's a totally useless statistic that tells you nothing about what might really be going on that month that's abnormal compared to baseline.
This is correct, teachers don't just stop getting paid and lose all benefits every summer (my best friend is a teacher and so is his brother), but at the same time it seems tons of schools now prefer (or are only able to find positions for) short contracts, more subs and temporary positions etc.<p>Especially if its not in a well funded area.
I don't think it's attributable to summer break. Didn't ~1,100K teachers quit in Fort Worth, TX due (in part) to a rise in political interference?
they obviously know that
I have recently started an experiment tracking a sample of 5000 employers in US and I see a bounce last week after a brief lull in july. I am not sure if there is a strong downward trend. <a href="https://corvi.careers/reports/usa-weekly-job-openings-report/" rel="nofollow">https://corvi.careers/reports/usa-weekly-job-openings-report...</a>
It's tough to trust job openings. It is a fact that some number of job postings are ghost jobs that don't exist. Either they're scams from impersonators or the companies are trying to keep a good public face, but many openings sit for MONTHS which just does not line up with the anecdotal evidence of people going 6-12 months without an interview much less an offer
> but many openings sit for MONTHS which just does not line up with the anecdotal evidence of people going 6-12 months without an interview much less an offer<p>Neither of these things are evidence of “ghost jobs”.<p>When I was doing a lot of hiring it would often take months to find qualified candidates for basic roles. I would get 100s of applicants per month but only about 20% of the resumes I received were even close to qualified. I’d try to schedule intro and screening calls with the qualified ones who would actually respond, but you wouldn’t believe how many applicants would have unreliable communication skills. Some times I wouldn’t get a response from someone for weeks or more, but many just don’t respond to contact after applying to your company. If we’re using the lingo I think a lot are “ghost candidates”.<p>There’s further fallout through the interview pipelines as you discover how many people have lied on their resume or otherwise aren’t qualified. That self-styled C++ expert who can’t give an example of RAII or the self-proclaimed TypeScript expert who doesn’t know anything outside of vanilla JavaScript. It’s weird.<p>Then there are negotiations. Some candidates want to collect offers from multiple companies and will ask for delays in hiring so they can continue interviewing and getting other offers. It can take weeks for some candidates to accept or decline your offer. If they decline you have to go to the next candidate, which can take more weeks, and then on to the next. If there’s relocation involved it takes longer to decide and get it done.<p>Then some times we’re hiring multiple people for a row, so we leave the listing up and open to continue hiring. This really angers the “ghost jobs” people because they assume 1 listing == 1 hire, as if the company needs to close the listing and then copy/paste to a new URL for the next hire.<p>So job openings that exist for “MONTHS” are not evidence of ghost jobs.<p>The people going 12 months without an interview are almost always doing something wrong. You wouldn’t believe how inexcusably bad many of the resumes out there can be. Some people are hung up on applying only to jobs they aren’t qualified for and then wonder why they’re not getting interviews.
Some of these offers may be part of visa or green card processes. Some require a labor market test in the form of a job ad and recorded response to it. If a suitable candidate applies, the visa/immigration process fails. Still, most companies don't intend to actually hire in this case as far as I understand it.
I think that is slightly blunted by this person looking at the week over week delta.
maybe, but ghost listings have to be posted at some point, and who knows how long the companies want to let them go (and sometimes they expire and someone needs to refresh them)<p>they're not all ghost jobs, and there is probably a base level of noise there you can ignore, but the variability doesn't mean the data is great and perfect
True, but is there any reason to think this dishonesty varies over time? The trend could be informative even if the raw numbers are nonsense
Yup, and my data only captures a part of professional job market which itself is small part of labor market. I'd use this as additional data point to other sources to correlate etc. However, the experiment is mostly to test my own thesis that unless there is a major event like covid, these trends are really hard to spot.
Google will put one job posting per PA per level regardless of one team hiring or twenty.<p>I have to assume they aren't the only employer to do this, so I think job openings are meaningless here.
What is also interesting is that the only sector thad added jobs was health care.
Healthcare has consistently been one of the biggest drivers of US GDP and job growth numbers for years now.<p>This is one of the major things that has helped explain why US consumer sentiment has been so out of step with headline numbers like employment, consumer spending, and GDP.<p>It also helps explain why there's so many economists are saying they see limited evidence of a "K-shaped economy", and say they see positive numbers throughout the distribution. It's very difficult to choose not to buy healthcare.
So perhaps we'll never get to a better healthcare+insurance market (nee "Free") through government, but eventually we will just all work in healthcare, and barter our nursing and dental skills in secret away from the insurance coders.
You can move to Singapore, if you want a better healthcare sector.<p>(The UK spends very roughly half of what the US spends on healthcare in terms of percentage of GDP. That's total (public plus private) expenditure. Singapore spends very roughtly half of what the UK spends by the same measure. Health outcomes amongst the three countries are comparable. If anything, Singapore is healthier.)
Singapore numbers ignore their underclass, which is significant. But you're right, if you're a westerner, Singapore's great.
Any 'underclass' also contributes to GDP and consumes healthcare. How is any of this ignored?<p>But yes, I agree that the US should let in more migrant workers. Good for the workers and good for the target country: cheap infrastructure is great!
I wish the US could also use migrant labour like Singapore instead of the current system of turning a blind eye to illegal immigration out of necessity
Singapore is the beneficiary of a neighboring impoverished itinerant workforce to supplement its own collapsing demographics with artificially cheap services. It’s hardly replicable most places.
Health outcomes in the US are affected by higher levels of obesity. If anything, the higher health spending keeps that from being worse. I expect Ozempic and the like to have a significant impact on this.
Your statement prompted me to look at immigration options in Singapore. It seems it is pretty reasonable to get a visa as a foreign technologist.
The US has around 4x the obesity rate of Singapore, which significantly reduces healthcare costs.
Europe is also excellent in my experience, specifically Portugal and Spain. My health insurance cost for a family of four in Spain is ~$2k/year as someone on a visa. In the US on an employer plan, it was ~$20k/year (premiums, copays, etc).
I think the commenter you responded to filtered first for countries with outcomes better or exceeding the US? Though I’m not sure Portugal and Spain automatically fall into that category
Oh, I picked Singapore, because I moved here. I picked US because that was the topic under discussion. And Britain because the parent comment talked about 'free' healthcare.
I can only n=1, but most, if not all, experiences we've had obtaining medical care were better in Europe. Care specialist for my autistic kids, primary care, etc. From my unofficial surveys, many folks I know in the US are having a hard time finding various care providers, even if they have insurance. More data on this is always welcome.
It seems fairly common in the US to have a hard time finding a doctor that will take your insurance, especially so if you are on Medicaid. Even with good insurance, a lot are just not seeing new patients. More and more tasks are being pushed off onto nurse practitioners and physician's assistants. And the number of residencies is still limited by the AMA, so you aren't getting enough new doctors.
I can believe this; it's my personal and anecdotal evidence (and that which is believed by family) that the maximum quality of US medical care is quite incredible, but any perceived median (accounting for accessibility and cost) is really quite shit
A quick search suggests that Spain spends around 9.3% of gdp on healthcare. The UK spends around 10.9%. Singapore is around 5.5%.
While interesting facts, this is typically not the primary criteria which people use to decide where to expat to, versus availability and affordability. I cannot speak to the residency requirements of Singapore, but those of western Europe are very generous, as some who has helped folks leave the US for there. If you are in Spain on a tourist visa, and apply for the equivalent of a digital nomad visa while in country, you get three years as a temporary resident. At three years, you re-apply for another two years, and after those five years you can apply for permanent residency. 80% of your income must come from outside of Spain. They’ll even take a letter from a US W2 employer as income verification.<p>If you have any resources you can recommend on immigrating to Singapore that would be helpful and relevant for folks considering it as an option (whether on an employment, student, or pension/non lucrative visa), I welcome them to add to my resources for distribution to those seeking an exit strategy. Thank you in advance.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161587">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161587</a> (resources)
Oh, I was purely talking about what healthcare costs society.<p>I love it in Singapore, but if you don't want to live in a steam sauna, there are better countries for you. And if you are an American, I guess you don't even benefit from our more enlightened tax system anyway.
> And if you are an American, I guess you don't even benefit from our more enlightened tax system anyway.<p><a href="https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-earned-income-exclusion" rel="nofollow">https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...</a><p>> If you are a U.S. citizen or a resident alien of the United States and you live abroad, you are taxed on your worldwide income. However, you may qualify to exclude your foreign earnings from income up to an amount that is adjusted annually for inflation. In addition, you can exclude or deduct certain foreign housing amounts.<p>So there are mechanisms by which to avoid paying income tax to the US as as someone with a potential US tax liability living and working abroad, although it can be a facts intensive situation. Think like a Hacker, this is just another system and set of rules to hack ("How can I live outside the US, maximize my quality of life, pay the taxes due to my residency jurisdiction, while avoiding paying as much US federal income tax as possible?").<p>(For the 2026 tax year, the maximum Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE) is $132,900 per qualifying person, an increase from $130,000 for 2025. Married couples where both spouses work abroad and qualify can exclude up to a combined $265,800; the contents of this comment are for educational purposes only, and are not financial or tax advice, speak with a professional)
Yes and for something rare or complex, you can always fall back on the public health insurance.
> Health outcomes amongst the three countries are comparable. If anything, Singapore is healthier.<p>healthcare is not for health. Its for sickness. Going to hospital doesnt make you "healthy" .<p>Maybe those countries dont have sickly population in the first palce like usa where a majority have metabolic diseases.
Singapore has severe consequences for executives who violate the public trust. That makes it hard for sociopaths to rig the system for the elites.
Stoppp, y'all really are making me want to move to Singapore with promises like that.
Maybe. Though Americans are free to vote for politicians who make similar laws, too.
There will never be a better healthcare because the true cost of fixing a body more often than not far exceeds the value that body produces.<p>People run to dismiss this with "well we need a different system then", but the problem is a fundamental one on par with "eating your cake and having it too".<p>The only way to get as close as possible to "good" healthcare is to have enough money to pay for everything out of pocket.
"The only way to get as close as possible to "good" healthcare is to have enough money to pay for everything out of pocket."<p>This isn't possible. Healthcare is a finite resource and having universal, government care not only puts your life into the hands of the government (see the UK for an example where parents are not allowed to take their children out of the hospital) but offers worse outcomes.<p>When you are young and healthy, it's great. As you age, life-or-death surgeries have long wait times. This can be seen in any country with universal care. My aging relatives in Canada are going through this right now and have been forced to come to the US to get surgery in months rather than waiting years.<p>MAID has been great for healthcare costs in Canada. Many people that would otherwise have been costing the system money, are now a benefit. The sad realization is that government-run programs need MAID to cut down on costs.<p>I know lots of expats living in Asia that are now getting older. They have to go elsewhere to get any surgeries done, because of this exact reason.<p>To make it better, we should only have insurance for surgeries that can't benefit from the free market and are relatively rare. Common surgeries and procedures should have no insurance. The prices would eventually fall to levels that were affordable.<p>The masses don't want plans like this. They like easy solutions that sound good when you say them and don't take a whole lot of thought besides an elementary school level of thinking.
There will never be a perfect healthcare system, sure, but the US healthcare system is just bad, and can be improved. We pay more for worse outcomes on average compared to most developed countries. Obviously it's just not working, I think it's indisputable at this point.
I don't really need to live forever, I just don't want to have to think about whether bleeding out in a cab is a better deal than an ambulance.<p>Or if that random doctor who just walked in is out of network and going to charge $30,000 for my stitches when $3,000 was already egregious.
There are already better systems of healthcare. The US one is only good if you're wealthy
> the true cost of fixing a body more often than not far exceeds the value that body produces<p>i softly agree but also think that a body does not need to generate value to pay for the costs in order for the whole process to sustain itself. Monitoring the stars for asteroids heading towards earth provides no market value, for example, but we can still afford to do it. so it's a matter of cost and available expenditure. the market is not net 0, so its possible to generate enough value to have enough to afford healthcare as an expense as a society<p>what are the costs of fixing a body? The residency pipeline is a bottleneck on labor, but assuming that gets sorted out and AI is capable of guiding any reasonable person through the process, why cant the cost of labor for a doctor drop dramatically?<p>i would guess limited resources are the biggest blockage, but i dont know how to break down a $20k hospital bill for giving birth into its actual costs. its hard to believe that really needs to be $20k.<p>I actually think its the opposite. there is so much friction with healthcare and the process of healing is slow enough that costs are inflated because the overall operating cost for the entire facility including rent, ER, having people on standby, who knows what else, all need to be recovered through whatever volume they process and they arent processing as quickly as the resources are able.<p>healthcare needs do not subscribe to a neat work schedule, and so we have to pay a lot of market prices to have the right availability at all times. but thats not a true cost, it is a result of accounting and underutilization
Redundancy is robustness is expensive.
If everything but healthcare is completely automated, all employed people will be employed in healthcare.
Growing up, almost every woman I was related to was in education. Principal, office staff, teachers.<p>Now, almost every woman I'm related to is in health care.<p>I've been joking for years that eventually everyone will either be in the hospital, or working there.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect</a><p>Any sector that's resistant to productivity growth is liable to become bigger and bigger part of the economy.
yeah but the size of the us healthcare sector (like 18%) is a policy choice, other developed countries have theirs at 10-12%.<p>U.S. healthcare is a giant predatory clusterfuck and seems impossible to meaningfully reform.
You can’t reform it because of the immense job loss that would result from an efficiently run public healthcare system. Think about all the useless paper pushers that are allowed to vote
Like the US Justice system, the best advice to give is to avoid the US Healthcare system as much as possible.
Singapore has more like 5.5% or so. (That's total expenditure: public plus private added up.)
I've seen on youtube how people said a major reason housing is a big employer and housing has not fallen in price is due to their industry's attitude and resistance to introducing technological advancements.<p>in fairness also regulation makes it hard when it specificies the solutions not the parameters (just to illustrate the idea not an actual rule: you must have X thickness of PVC versus your pipe must withstand X pressure)
And also when doctors are expected to provide the best treatments or else they can be sued for malpractice.
Demonstrating the waste of time that 99.9% of Youtube videos offer. Construction has seen tremendous technological advances, from materials to tools, even down to software that monitors workplace events.<p>All of these have led to conditions where it is expected for an entire house to go from start to finish in 100 days. A house with very high standards of plumbing, electrical, hvac, insulation, and other essentials compared to previous generations.
i think population pyramids will basically guarantee growth of that sector in almost all first world countries for thenext few decades
Based on their July 2026 report, there were tiny increases in several sectors. The big declines were in service providing, leisure and hospitality, and government (bc of a summer decline in local gov education).
I don't think many of the BBB healthcare cuts have hit yet.
I don't call that Heathcare. It call that Heath"Scam" run by Big Pharma and Insurance Mafia.
This has been the case in several recent reports. It really ought to put to bed the idea that Trump was somehow going to be "good for business" and bring back manufacturing. At best all he's done is create a ton of uncertainty, at worst he's actively harmed massive swaths of American businesses with tariffs, war, and gutting the federal workforce and programs that indirectly supported a ton of businesses.
It was the same in June I think...
Death can't get laid off
there's a massive wave of elderly coming (boomer generation) so it makes sense health care is going to becoming an even bigger economic force than it already is.
Wealthy, aging boomers with increasing need for health care, makes sense.
Clankers won't replace medical workers as fast. People get older and have less children too.
Not strange. All the money and wealth is in the hands of the olds and olds need much more health care than the young. So it's a gold rush to get their juicy dollars.
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And, as a result, the market is ... up?
Unemployment makes it more likely for the fed to lower interest rates, which makes the stock market more attractive, so, yes.<p>(Unemployment also generally causes lower inflation in general, at least according to the prevailing macroeconomic school of thought.)
Private sector gained jobs. Public sector lost more jobs than the private sector gained. News reports a negative number.
This is why engineers don't make money trading markets
I wonder if this is the evidence of the labor market decoupling from "the economy" in terms of economic productivity?<p>Folks keep predicting it. Maybe it's starting?
It's not. 23,000 jobs is 0.01% of the workforce, so it's negligible in terms of lost sales (probably hurts consumer confidence more). But it is a signal that the economy isn't running too hot, so the company's much larger borrowing costs aren't going up.
Maybe we can finally reach communism by first getting together and all agreeing "the economy" isn't a science and if we all just believe really hard, numbers can go up forever, then we won't even need money!
It only works until people try to withdraw money that doesn't exist. The less people believe the earlier that happens, but it will happen sooner or later.
Anything you can measure can be a science.
I think we're there already?
If the market expected a worse job loss than 23,000 that would make sense.<p>I'm not actually suggesting there's a good reason for market swings, just that bad news shouldn't necessarily cause the market to go down.
Yesterday they were expecting the report to show 80k+ jobs added. So, this is much, much worse than expected. The market is up because they expect this will keep the fed from raising interest rates, and also because the market is increasingly detached from reality.
Yeah, I'll never understand the disconnect between Wall Street and the mudslide of diarrhetic bad news that has been rolling in constantly.
Bad news sells. There is always some bad news to print so you hear about it. That doesn't mean things are bad though.
skill issue. Solved by having the correct model of the world and forces acting on it given (appropriately weighted) current context and your usual variance.<p>It's usually people who don't understand the context or assign appropriate weights to events and allow randomness that complain about not understanding markets.
For a selloff to happen, investors have to believe there is a better place for them to go. At worst, any bad news right now is making everything look equally bad, so there is no advantage to running away from Wall Street in particular.
Jobs down, threat of increased interest rates down
Bad news is good news, leading to possibly fewer rate hikes
The market is going up because the market (AI) thinks it means there will be a rate cut. Which is good for stocks.<p>But I have to inform you all that we are in a period of stagflation and there is no way out but pain for someone. Either the asset holders or the regular people who need to buy things.
This is a nothingburger article, 23,000 jobs lost is essentially flat.
Meanwhile Canada is up 75,000 jobs in July. Can't wait to see the next tantrum America throws our way.<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-jobs-july-2026-9.7299225" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-jobs-july-2026-9.729...</a>
One of the saddest parts of the current era is the wedge that has been driven in the US/Canada relationship. Canada is in the process of removing as many dependencies on the US as possible, because the US has destroyed trust in it, resulting in the need to turn to countries like China to be bigger trading partners. I'd say there's a possibility (as in > 30% chance) that Canada and European nations enter a post-NATO defense organization that excludes the US, something that seemed absolutely ludicrous even two years ago.<p>Sadly, the people responsible for this in the US have no clue it's happening, no clue of the negative consequences they will face because of it, and show a general disregard for understanding things or relationships in general. The information environment in the US has been rewarding ignorant selfishness for too long, shifting the entire nature of about 30%-50% of the population in negative way.
It's incredibly sad. It's such a lose-lose situation we're all in. We have enormous natural resources to share with an enormous industrial partner, we share an enormous land border, and are two of the culturally closest nations on the planet. China being the more palatable power to partner with is a horrifyingly bad sign that there's something deeply broken and in need of repair in the U.S.
Roughly 40 percent of Canadians in the top 1 percent of earners have moved to the US.<p><a href="https://thehub.ca/2026/04/03/can-anyone-solve-canadas-brain-drain-problem/" rel="nofollow">https://thehub.ca/2026/04/03/can-anyone-solve-canadas-brain-...</a>
some it seems like you're implying that canada is doing better than the usa. just look at the last 10 years of real gdp growth and it couldn't be any worse for canada.
As everyone knows, real gdp growth is the only metric of goodness. All other numbers and figures are meaningless, we all down before the might RGDPG
How about I sell you a dollar? My price will be one dollar. Then you can sell it back, and we'll have three GDP-dollars in total! On the basis of this remarkable profit, we can probably convince others to sell their dollars to us as well, because we can turn those dollars into similar profits faster than whatever the employees might've done with them. Economics is great. We're going to have such large numbers!
%Debt to GDP ratio is not a subject either country likes to focus on.<p>The magnificent 7 formed a large portion of the US growth numbers, but many have legally hidden >$1.6Tn in "AI" debt deep in the pages of their reports.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NufJ7g63KSY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NufJ7g63KSY</a><p>The Shrek movie is due out in July 2027, and strangely these often correlated with market corrections in the past. =3
Sorry, what's the connection here?
What’s the connection between the two most intertwined economies on planet earth?
That looking at monthly numbers is stupid? The US has had significantly more job growth in 2026 than Canada has. The July numbers are convergence to a roughly common mean.
It is stupid. But the connection is that the Americans do international politics in an abusive way now. There is a very real possibility that their leader will see <i>domestic bad number</i> and <i>foreign good number</i> and throw a fit and look for something or someone to beat on. By all means, someone please tell him that looking at the numbers is stupid.<p>In particular, the Americans have been throwing endless tantrums Canada's way. This week we're "nasty people" because we refuse to become an ecnomimc vassal state. I'm sure we'll hear more tariff sabre rattling from the Americans soon.
Looking beyond the monthly numbers, it came out today that the prior "good" numbers in the US were a mirage, and actually very very low.<p>So if you think looking at monthly numbers is "stupid", the only thing more stupid would be to take past good monthly numbers at face value, but then disregard the corrections that come later.
Canada is currently on the short list of countries Trump throws into his usual mad-libs of grievance flavored policy making.
It doesn't need a connection (even tho there are many). The US/Trump is going after Brazil for creating a payment system.
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<i>an LLM was able to confirm</i><p>Bless
It seems you're misinformed and confused.<p><a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2025007/article/00006-eng.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2025007/artic...</a>
Perhaps you shouldn't use Grok.
govt is resetting the baseline now, so we will see some good numbers in November.<p>it's all about optics for mid term.
No. Very bad economic numbers in August before a midterm is not a cunning political optics move.
I'm surprised by the conspiratorial comments here like this is some sort of 4D chess move. *It's not.*<p>This is chickens coming home to roost from US actions in Iran, with tariffs, and other things introducing economic uncertainty.<p>As you alluded to; this is terrible for Republicans in power. And quite useful for Democrats.
It doesn’t matter whether it <i>is</i> a good move; just whether they <i>think</i> it’s a good move.
if the government was able to lie on the jobs report, why wouldn't they just continuously pretend that jobs are up from now all the way through the election? (all the way through to the presidential election, for that matter)
The 2026 midterm election date is November 3rd, the jobs numbers are released on the first Friday of the month, November 6th. Intentionally trending numbers down in August, with only two more jobs reports before the election, would be risky (and stupid, and extremely unlikely). The Trump Administration just doesn't look ahead like that either, they live in the perpetual now.
Maybe. But I think the government could just lie about both quarters and then restate after the election.
These jobs lost/gained and unemployment statistics, especially on a monthly basis, and when the numbers are so small, are just noise. Seasonal adjustments alone (baseline assumptions on how many people should be employed) make them meaningless, as does the government definition of being unemployed or looking for work.<p>As far as the government is concerned if you have been looking for a job for so long and/or are so discouraged that you stop looking, then you are no longer "unemployed" since you are not looking for a job.<p>If you are software engineer who has not been able find a software job, and are now flipping burgers to at least have some income, then you have also dropped off the government stats since you now have a job.<p>And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything, and threatening anyone who doesn't support his lies, and it seems we have truly entered a post-truth world where "alternate facts" rule the day.<p>When you read headlines of companies laying off thousands of employees, that's real. When the government says they've retroactively adjusted their seasonally adjusted fake news, then not so much.
Indeed. Something to note is the labor force participation rate keeps dropping. We’re down to 61.4%. It was 61.5% in June 2026, 62.3% in June 2025.<p>We also have 4.8 million that are part-time employed, but want full-time work. That’s up from 4.7 million last month, and up from 4.5 million in June 2025, and up further from 4.2 million in June 2024.<p>There’s also 6.0 million that want a job, but aren’t employed. This is the same as June 2025, but up by 800,000 since June 2024.<p>So if you take the U-3 number <i>(what’s reported)</i> then factor in the other two figures, you really have 10.5% that are unemployed, discouraged, or underemployed.<p>—<p>The other question never answered is, <i>“How many jobs are needed to create equilibrium?”</i>, or where the employment rate remains stable. That’s NEVER talked about by media or the BLS, but it’s actually not difficult to get an approximate answer.<p>You’d want to look at population growth rates for 18-22 years ago <i>(as those people would now be entering the workforce)</i>, multiply that by the labor force participation rate, and then divide as appropriate for the period. Typically, the US economy would need 140,000 - 145,000 new seasonally-adjusted jobs created every month to maintain a steady employment rate, given its historic and current population growth rates.
>Indeed. Something to note is the labor force participation rate keeps dropping. We’re down to 61.4%. It was 61.5% in June 2026, 62.3% in June 2025.<p>Yes, it's called people getting older and retiring. It's pretty obvious that's the cause if you compare the labor force participation rate overall vs for 25-54 year olds.<p><a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART" rel="nofollow">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART</a><p><a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060" rel="nofollow">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060</a>
The Fed <i>just</i> had an article on the labor force participation rate drops: <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2026/aug/what-is-behind-sharp-drop-labor-force-participation" rel="nofollow">https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2026/aug/what-is-b...</a>
> The BLS said employment contracted the most in “local government education,” which declined by 50,000 roles, likely reflecting teachers during summer break<p>Are most teachers considered and counted as unemployed during summner break? All the teachers I know are paid 12 months a year. 10-month appointments are seen in colleges and universities but even there professors often have grants that pay for their research in the summer and even if not I don't think I'd consider them "unemployed" in the summer.
I believe the BLS tracks all of these. I know they measure people who gave up on finding a job (they call them “discouraged workers” in stats normally).<p>I’m pretty sure I’ve seen underemployment charts too that seemed to track something like “people with degrees or certifications outside their field”.<p>They don’t normally make headlines, though. The charts and stats for those are clearly for economists and not formatted to make good headlines on the news.
>As far as the government is concerned if you have been looking for a job for so long and/or are so discouraged that you stop looking, then you are no longer "unemployed" since you are not looking for a job.<p>> ...<p>>When you read headlines of companies laying off thousands of employees, that's real. When the government says they've retroactively adjusted their seasonally adjusted fake news, then not so much.<p>The BLS keeps track of the discouraged workers as well, and it's not significantly different than previous trends.<p><a href="https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/alternative-measures-of-labor-underutilization.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/alternative-...</a><p>>And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything, and threatening anyone who doesn't support his lies, and it seems we have truly entered a post-truth world where "alternate facts" rule the day.<p>You don't see the irony here with what you're doing?
At this point it's fair to doubt just about any claim or number that comes out of the federal government. I'm sure there are still thousands of honest researchers and professionals at all levels of the executive branch, but over the past year so many of them have been pushed out and so many more have been under pressure to produce only politically-approved output, that the federal government is becoming increasingly unreliable as an institution.
> over the past year so many [federal employees] have been pushed out and so many more have been under pressure to produce only politically-approved output<p>This is the most obvious point in favor of this perspective, especially as it being an escalation by the current president and his administration. It hardly even seems to be a cynical take. At least, the cynicism is being used appropriately, as a tool to guide one's thoughts rather than being the entire argument.<p>One can look at the DOGE cuts, tally up the numbers, and see for themself that the stated reason (desired reduction of spending that is orders of magnitude higher than what they've actually cut) can't be the actual reason for these cuts. Coupled with the... less than candid statements from this administration about anything and everything the past 17 months (hey, has anyone heard about these "Epstein files"?), the most logical conclusion is that they are deceptive whenever it suits them. And yes, even the nominally-objective numbers need to come attached with a reason to be trusted; we already know a litany of ways they can be manipulated (meaning they are indeed "nominally" objective, and have been for a long time); they can't be reasonably taken at face value.
> You don't see the irony here with what you're doing?<p>Sorry, is OP the POTUS, speaking with Presidential authority and threatening federal employees with termination of employment for their political beliefs? The fact you think they're wrong is not a reason to equate their comment to Trump's actions.
And this is even after Trump fired the previous Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner for simply reporting poor jobs growth.<p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-seeks-to-fire-bureau-of-labor-statistics-director-after-release-of-weak-jobs-report" rel="nofollow">https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-seeks-to-fire-bu...</a>
"And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything…"<p>And I suspect, sometime in the future, we're going to discover that the numbers were even worse than we thought they were—were covered up.
Maybe, maybe not.<p>And when a vast majority of the population isn't working what do these numbers really tell us? If we have fewer jobs, but then the people doing those jobs are paid more and thus paying more in taxes, maybe the jobs numbers don't even matter (I'm not sure that's true, just for arguments sake).<p>And let's say they were covered up. Ok and what does that change? Are people who already hate Donald Trump going to vote harder and then, what? Pursue the same economic policy? Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.
Pretty sure the Democrats would not have done either the ridiculous tariffs or the stupid Iran war. They wouldn't have passed anything like the BBB. Nor would they have tried to scare all the immigrants out of the country.
> Pretty sure the Democrats would not have done either the ridiculous tariffs<p>They may not have gone with that specific approach, but the direction was the same. Instead of tariffs the Biden Administration's BBB bill gave money to corporations instead. Two directionally aligned approaches there.<p>The rest of the comments (immigration policy or Iran) are irrelevant to this specific topic IMO
> thus paying more in taxes<p>If the taxes were being spent to help those who were not working (unable to or for whatever reason) maybe that would be fine. We might take in more taxes, but when we cut funding for childhood cancer research, and build more missiles... is this really the way we want our money spent?<p>> Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.<p>Perhaps there was more overlap 10 years ago, but... that "both sides are just as bad" doesn't seem to ring true.
> We might take in more taxes, but when we cut funding for childhood cancer research, and build more missiles... is this really the way we want our money spent?<p>Well we all have our opinions on how our money is spent. I for one think we need a lot more missiles and a lot more folks working instead of living off of taxpayer dollars (labor participation rate is the lowest <i>ever</i>), broadly speaking. But we don't really have to have an either-or scenario here and it's unfortunate that politics has gotten this bad in America.<p>> Perhaps there was more overlap 10 years ago, but... that "both sides are just as bad" doesn't seem to ring true.<p>Well, I'm not suggesting both sides are bad (though they are in their own ways - we should eject all communists and fascists from this country and planet).<p>I'm suggesting that Democrats <i>agree</i> with Donald Trump's economic policy even if some are politicking otherwise. If you look back to Trump's first term he began instituting tariff-like policies and other economic agenda items around restoring manufacturing capacity. Biden continued those policies, and then Trump has taken them a step further. Democrats today are campaigning on high inflation, but recall that inflation was also very high in 2022 and so forth, gas prices were even higher than during our support for Ukraine (I strongly support Ukraine), and so forth.<p>But if/when Democrats are elected it is unlikely they will roll back the Trump tariff scheme though perhaps negotiate more favorable deals with less bickering with our European friends and partners, and will maintain tariffs and other economic measures against countries such as China and perhaps others like Mexico and Canada.
Job numbers have always been reviewed down after being released every single time since 2022.
So you are saying it's even worse than the numbers reported.
<a href="https://archive.is/bsnvr" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/bsnvr</a>
The deficit is 6% of GDP. Economic growth is 2%, if that. If the Democrats win the House and reduce spending, look out below.
wow this thread made me realize the level of manipulation in HN discussions. The amount of bots posting comments passing as real is staggering.
All part of the misanthropic plan?
Sudden reversal? It’s been the apocalypse for several years with each year getting worse
Note, also:<p>> In yet another troubling sign for the labor market, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that it revised down the prior two months by a combined 103,000. May’s jobs total was cut by 66,000 to 129,000 total jobs added, while June’s total was lowered by 37,000 to a total gain of 57,000.
I'm not an expert at quantifying the magnitude of how bad that is, but revision down is not something "exceptional". The numbers have been revised down consistently since ~2022: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/business/economy/economy-data-revisions.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/business/economy/economy-...</a>
One of the reaction threads I saw elsewhere on social media pointed out the response rates for the surveys that come up with these numbers is plummeting--about a decade ago, we had ~85% response rate, now we're done to ~65% response rate. So the initial quality of these numbers is probably getting a lot worse.
These guys are just nonstop liars. Print the headline, revise when no one is looking.
To be fair, revisions are very normal, because the more reliable data (tax filings, for example) comes in later.<p><a href="https://xcancel.com/ernietedeschi/status/1951721848393105573" rel="nofollow">https://xcancel.com/ernietedeschi/status/1951721848393105573</a>
The jobs numbers are notoriously laggy. On the way up, lag means constant upwards revisions. On the way down, lag means constant downwards revisions.<p>ADP Payrolls are a lower latency indicator but not quite as broad.
This is how bls data has always worked. And the reason is that they don’t always have the full picture every month and need to account for new data in the stats.
If you can do economics without revision, that is, find the real number of jobs lost or gained or workplace participation in real time, you could make a lot of money. Probably win some prizes, too.<p>Economics is an imperfect science.
Meanwhile Canada added 75,000 new jobs in July. Perhaps Trump's tariff scheme is not working so well after all.<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/9.7299225" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/9.7299225</a>
I have been very critical of the Federal gov (less so under Carney) and I will admit this job report actually was very good as it wasn't just majority public sector hirings which was very common under Trudeau:<p>Private-sector jobs: +58,000 jobs [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]<p>Government/public-sector jobs:-27,000 jobs (a decline) [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]<p>Self-employed: +44,000 jobs [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]<p>Part-time jobs: +36,600 jobs [money.usnews.com], [ca.finance.yahoo.com]
No one with at least two brain cells to rub together thought the tariffs was going to make anything better.
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Perhaps that is what you are wishing for, but it’s not the reality.
Look at the M2 supply growth, it can't collapse with that growth but inflation will run quite high.
Citation needed. Canada's economic indicators are all extremely healthy, despite the trade war tantrum from its southern neighbour.
You dropped the "/s".
Who actually believes these numbers?
I love how this is immediately used as an excuse to reinflate the AI bubble. Silicon Valley and Wall Street are just begging for backlash.
Guess it's time for Trump to fire another BLS director and find one who's better at cooking the books...
Interesting, this article doesn't seem to mention the layoffs from the tech industry. Which, if you look at the numbers, sort of make up the bulk of it.
No, this is wrong. If you read the report, the bulk of the job contraction was in industries entirely divorced from the tech sector. I don’t understand why you would make this comment without even reading the article, let alone the report itself.
Tech sector is not the bulk of it, many sectors doing worse and that is why they got the headlines. "Financial Activities" supersector was terrible this month. Another reason is there is not an umbrella "tech" sector in the NAICS, so it's harder to report on.
"sudden"
My thought exactly.<p>I began rapidly recalling the hundreds of sources foreseeing this well in advance, citing it, raising alarm, and being ignored.<p>I guess we are supposed to take numbers at face value, disregard what generated them and why, accept what they imply as presented, and never question it.<p>Then we must patiently withhold intelligence, wait for sanctioned admission, then finally consider what we already knew.<p>Suddenly, Rome collapsed.<p>Edit: Don't take the flagging to heart. If you dig, you will find a thousand exceptions made where the single-word comment fit the narrative and endured. This comment will be flagged too.
Just look at a graph from the last few years. It bounces up and down a lot, but there's a pretty clear downward trend line, and it's been around zero for over a year, with many individual months slightly above or slightly below. <a href="https://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_CES0000000001_2021_2026_all_period_M07_net_1mth.gif" rel="nofollow">https://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers...</a>
I predict the <i>numbers</i> will look good after November. Maybe not <i>reality</i> but the numbers.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
Meanwhile, Canada adds 75k jobs in the same month.<p>> Gains were focused on the private sector, with strength in wholesale and retail trade, finance and insurance, and professional and scientific services. Public sector jobs fell by 14,500 amid an official bid to cut government spending.<p><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-canada-labour-force-survey-jobs-unemployment-rate-july-2026/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-can...</a>
Yeah, our unemployment rate is still higher though with basically no productivity growth since 2015 (see link). Maybe 2 years straight of these job gains and then we can talk.<p><a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3610070601&cubeTimeFrame.startMonth=01&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2015&cubeTimeFrame.endMonth=01&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2026&referencePeriods=20150101%2C20260101" rel="nofollow">https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=361007...</a><p><a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260807/dq260807a-eng.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260807/dq260...</a>
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Vertical Thinkers: “Who could’ve seen this coming when all the data looks good?!”<p>Lateral Thinkers: quietly sipping tea, nursing our wounds from layoffs, lamenting another unheard Cassandra moment.<p>Basically sums up the mood, I find. Don’t worry, we’re always steeping a fresh pot for the new club members when stories like these hit the wire.
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Nonsense. We can and do downgrade folks from better to worse employment all the time, even moreso during this administration!<p>Can't have the plebes unionizing or getting <i>more</i> compensation.
what is this comment? did you reply to the wrong thread or is this something worse?
in the grand scheme of things 23,000 isn't a big number and mostly a seasonal variability during summer, nothing to do with unions or Trump (I know people love to blame him for everything).
with inflation under control there is little incentive to raise rates and not enough to cut, consensus is that fed will hold<p>in the meantime stock market is going to do another major boom cycle
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The great reversal is happening. It was about time to quell the bubble-sayers.
firstly :: "economy" cannot lose jobs because it doesn't have any.
Secondly :: there is absolutely no way for you to know it.
That’s just nitpicking words and yes you can tell from payroll
Thanks you for your kind reply.
Calling it nitpicking doesn't make it untrue and payrolls are not public.
To come up with factual data, one needs do some investigative journalism, and nbcnews' not one of them.
Which is it, is it unknowable, or is it certain that it can't be?
Still has a long way to go to catch us up on the other side of the pond.