Household Survey Jobs Data Is Garbage Due To Missing Population Adjustments

(Click on image to enlarge)

BLS nonfarm payrolls and benchmark-adjusted data.

Understanding the Lead Chart

Before discussing the January 2026 data, it is important to understand the lead chart.

As part of its monthly jobs reports, the BLS provides an adjustment series to normalize employment levels to match nonfarm payrolls

The experimental series is LNS16000000, “Employment Adjusted to CES Concepts“.

It is updated once a year, typically in January. However, the BLS did not release the population adjustments this month.

For 2024, the BLS admits that it undercounted employment by 2 million, spread out over a number of years. Instead of parsing that out in the correct months, the BLS plowed the entire adjustment into January of 2025.

All posts on foreign-born employment suffer this flaw. There are no back adjustments. We did not suddenly add 2.245 million jobs in January of 2025, all US-Born. (Difference between the dashed blue line and the yellow line)

There is no valid data at all on full vs parttime employment, on foreign born employment, etc.

Expected Population Control Update Did Not Happen

BLS Note: The annual population control adjustments that are usually incorporated with the release of January estimates in February will instead be introduced with the release of February 2026 estimates in March.

Consequently, the initial January 2026 household survey estimates in this news release continue to use short-term projections of monthly population estimates derived from population adjustments introduced in January 2025 (based on Vintage 2024 population estimates provided by the U.S. Census Bureau). As soon as practicable, BLS plans to revise January 2026 estimates to incorporate the updated population controls.

Short Synopsis

The Household Survey this month is garbage, more so than usual.
The BLS did not release the annual household population control estimates.

I don’t accuse the BLS of direct data manipulation. Mostly, the BLS has really sloppy procedures and data collection issues on top of declining response rates.

However, the absence of expected 2025 population adjustments makes the transition from December 2025 to January 2026 bogus, and suspicious.

The BLS did release adjustments to the Establishment Survey. The result was over a million less jobs in 2025 than previously announced.

My Charts

I will continue to use what the BLS refers to as “experimental data” in my charts because the official series data is admitted garbage, especially for year-over-year comparisons.

All household data is subject to bad sampling and poor response rates. Illegal immigrants are highly unlikely to be responding accurately to government data surveys, if responding at all.

As noted, this experimental data is delayed this month. So, my lead chart, while the best anyone can do, is still inaccurate.

Key Thoughts for January 2026

All Household data below is suspect for reasons explained above.
Establishment data (nonfarm payrolls) for January is also suspect. Who really believes a gain of 130,000 jobs in January?
The BLS reports the economy lost 45,000 nonfarm payroll jobs between July and December of 2025. So suddenly businesses go on a hiring spree in January. Really?
The negative revision of over a million Establishment Survey nonfarm payrolls for 2025 is believable. It’s based on highly accurate quarterly reports.

Monthly Job Report Details

Nonfarm Payroll: +130,000 to 158,627,000 – Establishment Survey
Civilian Non-institutional Population: +166,000 to 274,982,000
Civilian Labor Force: +387,000 to 171,882,000 – Household Survey
Participation Rate: +0.1 to 62.5% – Household Survey
Employment:+528,000 to 164,520,000 – Household Survey
Unemployment: -141,000 to 7,362,000 – Household Survey
Baseline Unemployment Rate: -0.1 to 4.4% – Household Survey
Not in Labor Force: -221,000 to 103,100,000 – Household Survey
U-6 unemployment: -0.4 to 8.0% – Household Survey

Nonfarm Payrolls Change by Sector

(Click on image to enlarge)

Nonfarm Payrolls Change by Sector in Thousands

Nonfarm Payrolls: +130
Manufacturing: +5
Construction: +33
Leisure and Hospitality: +1
Private Education and Health Care: +137
Professional and Business Services: +34
Information: -12
Financial: -22
Retail: +3
Wholesale: 0
Government: -42

Private education and health (demographic related) is again the strongest sector.

Monthly Revisions

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised down by 15,000, from +56,000 to +41,000.
The change for December was revised down by 2,000, from +50,000 to +48,000.
With these revisions, employment in November and December combined is 17,000 lower than previously reported.

Part-Time Jobs

Involuntary Part-Time Work: -453,000 to 4,888,000
Voluntary Part-Time Work: +678,000 to 22,929,000
Total Full-Time Work: +582,000 to 135,797,000
Total Part-Time Work: +31,000 to 28,743,000
Multiple Job Holders: +-79,000 to 8,769,000

The above numbers never total correctly due to the way the BLS makes seasonal adjustments. I list them as reported.

Hours and Wages

Average weekly hours of all private employees rose by 0.1 at 34.3 hours.
Average weekly hours of all private service-providing employees was flat at 33.2 hours.
Average weekly hours of manufacturers rose 0.1 hours to 40.1 hours.

Hourly Earnings

This data is also frequently revised. Here are the numbers as reported this month.

Average Hourly Earnings of All Nonfarm Workers rose $0.15 to $37.17. A year ago the average wage was $35.84. That’s a gain of 3.7%.

Average hourly earnings of Production and Nonsupervisory Workers rose $0.12 to $31.95. A year ago the average wage was $30.79. That’s a gain of 3.2%.

Those gains are reportedly beating inflation. But that’s nonsense too because the CPI does not count property taxes or homeowners’ insurance in its calculations.

Unemployment Rate

Unemployment rate seasonally adjusted, data from BLS, chart by Mish

Alternative Measures of Unemployment

(Click on image to enlarge)

Table A-15 is where one can find a better approximation of what the unemployment rate really is.

The official unemployment rate is 4.3 percent.
U-6 is much higher at 8.0 percent.

Both numbers would be way higher still, were it not for millions dropping out of the labor force over the past few years.

Some of those dropping out of the labor force retired because they wanted to retire. Some dropped out over Covid fears and never returned. Still others took advantage of a strong stock market and retired early.

The rest is disability fraud, forced retirement (need for Social Security income), and discouraged workers.

Birth Death Model

Starting January 2014, I dropped the Birth/Death Model charts from this report.

The birth-death model pertains to the birth and death of corporations not individuals except by implication.

For those who follow the numbers, I retain this caution: Do not subtract the reported Birth-Death number from the reported headline number. That approach is statistically invalid.

Birth-Death Methodology Explained

I gave a detailed explanation of the model and why the usual calculation is wrong in my June 8, 2024 post How Much Did the BLS Birth-Death Adjustment Pad the May Jobs Report?

I repeat, do not subtract the birth-death number from the headline number.

Household Survey vs. Payroll Survey

The payroll survey (sometimes called the establishment survey) is the headline jobs number. It is based on employer reporting.
The household survey is a phone survey conducted by the BLS. It measures employment, unemployment and other factors.

If you work one hour, you are employed. If you don’t have a job and fail to look for one, you are not considered unemployed, rather, you drop out of the labor force.

Negative Revisions

On September 9, 2025 I commented New QCEW Data Indicates More Big Negative Revisions Coming to Job Reports

The discrepancy between jobs reports and quarterly data widens again.

Sure enough. With the January 2026 report, the BLS revised nonfarm payrolls lower for last year by over 1 million jobs.

Understanding the Enormous BLS Job Report Errors

For a full explanation of the lead chart, please see my December 18, 2025 post Understanding the Enormous BLS Job Report Errors, What Really Happened?

Four things: Immigration, Birth-Death Model, Response Rates, Sampling.

Incredibly Bad Standard Numbers

Many people are reporting unbelievable year-over-year numbers, then attributing the improvement to Trump.

For example, on the Benchmark adjusted chart, Employment in November 2025 was 163,741,000 and November of 2024 was 161,661,000. That’s supposedly a gain of 2.08 million.

But that entire gain occurred in January of 2025 when the BLS threw the whole adjustment into a single month.

Foreign-Born Employment Nonsense

The numbers in my charts are seasonally adjusted. Foreign born employment is not adjusted, compounding comparison errors.

And we have no BLS revised data for foreign born employment. So, all such foreign and US-born comparisons with BLS data remain garbage.

A second major problem with foreign-born employment is the BLS makes no distinction between US citizens who were foreign born and genuine foreign workers.

Final Thoughts

Last month I stated “W are working with highly revised monthly data then potentially huge benchmark revisions.”

Those potentially revisions are now posted.

However, the annual household population revisions are not yet posted. Despite being the BLS best estimates, they are considered “experimental”.

BLS Revises Nonfarm Payrolls for 2025 Lower by 1 Million Jobs

This morning I discussed the BLS annual revisions to nonfarm payrolls.

For discussion, please see BLS Revises Nonfarm Payrolls for 2025 Lower by 1 Million Jobs