Only 181k Total Jobs Gained for all of 2025 after Massive Revisions Lower

The analysis below covers the Employment picture released on the first Friday of every month. While most of the attention goes to the Headline Report, it can be helpful to look at the details, revisions, and other reports to get a better gauge of what is really going on.

Current Trends

The jobs report showed an increase of 130k jobs in January. This was a beat over expectations but would objectively be considered a weak report. More surprising is the Household Report which showed a gain of 528k jobs. This is very strong, but it should be taken in context. Last January a similar event happened but to a greater extreme – the Household report showed 2.24M gained vs a 50k loss.

Figure: 1 Primary Report vs Household Survey – Monthly