Personally, I’m not convinced, but if you are, then consider this graph:
Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment from July release (bold black), from June release (green), civilian employment adjusted to the NFP concept, experimental research series using smoothed population controls (bold dark blue), centered 3 month moving average (light blue), all in 000’s s.a. Source: BLS via FRED, BLS, and author’s calculations.
I noted this downturn in June, when the CPS series seemed to have peaked in April. Note that the CPS series is not revised month by month.
I don’t put much emphasis on the CPS employment series (from which this NFP concept series is from) because it is subject to much greater variability due to much smaller sample size. On the other hand, a trend in the CPS series is much more interesting. So, really, if Trump was disturbed (on any number of dimensions, but here on the basis of the employment numbers), he should’ve fired somebody back in June when the the CPS numbers came out showing a decline (overall employment shows the same behavior). On the other hand, there were similar downturns in 2022 and early 2024 (however, with no corresponding slowdown in NFP).
I find it somewhat ironic that the research series of CPS data adjusted to NFP concept arose in the wake of the 2002-03 recovery (recall the “jobless recovery”)when conservative economic pundits argued the establishment series was mismeasuring the jobs recovery.
