New estimates suggest that the Department of Labor’s employment report for the year through March overestimated growth by 818,000 jobs — the largest revision since 2009. 

Initial reports suggested that that 2.9 million jobs were added to the economy from April 2023 through the end of March 2024. The downward revision signals that the country boasts 0.5 percent fewer jobs than previously believed.

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s initial report suggested that employers added about 242,000 jobs each month, with Wednesday’s revision, monthly growth comes out to 174,000. 

Although the figure still indicates a solid pace for growth, the rate is nearly 30 percent lower than the previously estimated number. 

It also serves as a blow to the Biden Administration which has touted strong monthly jobs reports as an indication of policy success. As recently as July, Mr. Biden described the previous month’s report as an indication of “real progress for hardworking families.” 

The correction ultimately aligns with the predictions of Wall Street analysts who forecasted a negative revision of up to one million. The figure issued on Wednesday may be further updated in the final report published in February 2025. 

Given that the Federal Reserve pays close attention to the strength of the American economy to guide movement on interest rates, market analysts will be looking to see how the report impacts the Fed’s approach to cutting rates during September’s meeting. 

The cooler-than-expected market data fuels concerns that the Fed has waited too long to lower interest rates. Some analysts speculate that the correction could push the Fed to opt for a 50 basis point interest rate cut, up from the standard 25 basis points. 

“If the labor market started to deteriorate sooner than 2024, I think there’s a case that the Fed could indeed cut by 50 basis points in September,” chief economist of LPL Financial, Jeffrey Roach, told Politico.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell may offer a glimpse into the central bank’s plans when he delivers a speech at the Kansas City Fed’s annual conference in Jackson Hole this Friday. 

President Trump took to Truth Social to call the correction a “MASSIVE SCANDAL!” and accused the “Harris-Biden Administration” of “fraudulently manipulating Job Statistics to hide the true extent of the Economic Ruin they have inflicted upon America.”

“The real Numbers are much worse than that and, if Comrade Kamala gets another four years, millions more Jobs will VANISH overnight, and Inflation will completely destroy our Country,” he added. 

Trump provided no evidence to support his claim that the reports were handled illegally. 

The former chief White House economist under President Biden, Ernie Tedeschi, swatted the 45th president’s claims, noting that downward revisions were seen during Trump’s office tenure.

“If this were true, then Trump cooked the books too, because the Aug 2019 preliminary benchmark revision was -501K (very close to the final in Jan 2020),” he wrote X. The agency, he claims, revises the numbers because “they have integrity and want the best estimate possible.”