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

BLS Nonfarm payrolls, employment level, and employment level adjusted to nonfarm payrolls.
 

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“.

I was not aware this series existed until yesterday.

For 20 years between 2003 and 2023, the BLS adjustment was remarkably accurate.

But something happened in the late 1990s and again starting in 2023.

Migration Flow 1999–2000
 

PEW reports The Migration Flow Peaked in 1999–2000

At the start of the 1990s, immigration flows had reached historically high levels of more than a million people a year. In the early and middle parts of the 1990s, the annual numbers held relatively steady at around 1.1 million people a year.

By 1999, immigration levels had increased substantially to the point where the average inflow during the peak period of immigration—a period encompassing 1999–2000 in most estimates and extending a year in either direction in some—reached at least 1.5 million per year. Again, this figure is “an average of averages” that may actually understate the inflows of immigrants, since about 1.8 million arrived in 1999 according to data from Census 2000. The average annual level of immigration during this peak period is about 400,000 greater than during the mid-1990s, or about one third higher.

We know what happened with immigration starting between 2022 and the end of 2024. Biden opened the floodgates.

In both periods, a normally reliable BLS adjustment benchmark went haywire.

For years I pointed out the discrepancy between payrolls and jobs, unaware this series back to 1994 even existed.

2025 Benchmark Revisions

A huge decline in BLS response rates following Covid compounded the problem. And the BLS birth-death model is wrong at turns.

This combination of factors made a remarkable mess of things for the BLS. But the big one is immigration.

In January of 2025, the BLS made a huge adjustment.

The Adjustments to Household Survey Population Estimates in January 2025 were enormous.

The January 2025 adjustment was large relative to adjustments in past years and reflects both updated methodology and new information about net international migration. While the January 2025 adjustment reflects cumulative change back to the 2020 Census blended population base, it largely reflects an increase in net international migration that was concentrated in recent years. To show the impact on the labor force data, BLS uses special tabulations of December data that incorporate the new population controls. When applied to December 2024, the January 2025 adjustment increased the estimated size of the civilian noninstitutional population 16 years and over by 2.9 million people (or 1.1 percent). The adjustment increased the civilian labor force by 2.1 million, including an increase of 2.0 million in employment and an increase of 105,000 in unemployment.

Historical data comparability

The introduction of population controls affects the comparability of estimates over time. In accordance with usual practice, official household survey estimates for December 2024 and earlier months were not revised. Consequently, household survey data for January 2025 will not be directly comparable with data for December 2024 or earlier periods. Although the official estimates were not revised, BLS will produce experimental time series back to April 2020 for the labor force and the employed that account for the January 2025 population control effects. These experimental series will be available in the CPS technical documentation shortly after the publication of the Employment Situation news release on February 7, 2025.

January 2025 Adjustments
 

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.

This makes all historical comparisons of numbers flawed.

However, there is yet another series in which the BLS parses that 2 million undercount into the correct months.

Benchmark-Adjusted Employment and Nonfarm Payrolls
 

This is another data series I expect few people are aware of. Again, those are all BLS numbers.

For discussion, please see Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey

The dashed lines show the benchmark revisions to the employment levels and the household survey CPS to the employment levels calculation.

Key Points

• The benchmark revisions to the employment level are much higher than the widely reported BLS employment level.
• Even with benchmark revisions, the adjusted employment level to CES nonfarm payrolls understates jobs.

Immigration largely explains both of these discrepancies.

Employment Level Minus Benchmark-Adjusted Employment
 

Nonfarm Payrolls Minus Benchmark-Adjusted CPS
 

For both charts, I subtracted the BLS benchmark-adjusted numbers from the standard reports.

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.

If one subtracts the current estimate from the November benchmark-adjusted number, the year-over-year gain is only 359,000.

More benchmark revisions are coming in two more months. I expect negative revisions. Meanwhile, these adjusted charts now put some sanity into year-over-year comparisons.

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.

How Fast is the US Shedding Foreign-Worker Jobs?

On December 11, 2025 I asked How Fast is the US Shedding Foreign-Worker Jobs?

Think carefully.

Foreign-born includes US citizens.

There is one more big issue. Since there is widespread disbelief in BLS numbers, why are we supposed to believe this set of BLS numbers?

Are Illegal immigrants suddenly responding to BLS household surveys?

It’s really sad to see a parade of people challenging every BLS report for years, suddenly become believers that that we created 2 million jobs in a single month in January of 2025, all of them US born.

Revelio says foreign-worker employment, not to be confused with foreign-born, is actually on the rise.

Click on the above link for details.

A Word About Percentages

The adjusted numbers in this post are from the BLS. My earlier stab, More Nonsense on the Alleged Surge in US Born Employment, is superseded by this post with actual adjusted numbers from the BLS. (I spread 2 million evenly over 4 years, but the BLS parsing is more refined).

On a percentage basis, 2 million is tiny. For example, a 2-million adjustment to 164 million jobs is only only 1.2 percent.

However, a 2 million adjustment that turns a year-over-year gain of 600,000 into 2,600,000 is a stupefying error. Yet, it’s been repeated over and over again.

Once again, the historical non-revised employment, job, counts, and labor force numbers from both the household and establishment surveys are garbage.

However, percentage numbers such as the unemployment rate are still valid (discounting response rates, sampling errors, etc.)

I crunched the adjusted numbers for unemployment rates with adjusted labor force numbers and there was not a single difference in the rates between the headline numbers.

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