Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Bureau of Labor Statistics corrects the record. Again.

Thanks to Ann Althouse for bringing this up.

Each year, the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey employment estimates are benchmarked to comprehensive counts of employment for the month of March. These counts are derived from state unemployment insurance (UI) tax records that nearly all employers are required to file. For National CES employment series, the annual benchmark revisions over the last 10 years have averaged plus or minus one-tenth of one percent of total nonfarm employment. The preliminary estimate of the benchmark revision indicates an adjustment to March 2024 total nonfarm employment of -818,000.

The NYT does the math and tells us that employers added 174K/month rather than the 242K/month originally reporter. 

That's um, a big difference.  Is BLS shading the intitial numbers to please the bureaucrats above them, up to and including the president? This seems to happen a lot, that the White House can announce big improvements, while the walkback is buried a few pages deeper into the paper (as we used to say.) I doubt there is a conspiracy in the usual sense of agencies being told what numbers to put out there, reality be damned, but I would certainly believe that this is a case of not have to tell cats to catch mice.