From CES, CPS, QCEW, Philly Fed, and from ADP:
Figure 1: Cumulative change in nonfarm payroll employment from BLS CES-official (blue), implied benchmark release (tan), implied early benchmark (green), from CPS measure adjusted to NFP concept, smoothed population controls, 3 mo centered moving average (red), QCEW total covered seasonally adjusted by author using Census X-13 in logs (pink), and ADP private plus BLS government employment (purple), all in 000’s, s.a. Source: BLS and ADP via FRED, QCEW, Philadelphia Fed, and author’s calculations.
Philadelphia Fed implied early benchmark calculated by applying ratio of Early benchmark sum of state employment to CES sum of state employment to the total series PAYEMS, as reported by BLS.
According to every measure shown above, employment is currently below peak. Caveat: civilian employment and civilian employment adjusted to NFP concept, not expressed as a centered moving average, are above recent peak. However,
Only BLS and ADP private nonfarm payroll employment are above the 2025M07 peak (and the latter by 0.02%). However, we know that these post-shutdown observations are subject to larger than normal measurement error.
