firstly :: "economy" cannot lose jobs because it doesn't have any.
Secondly :: there is absolutely no way for you to know it.
U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
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Re: U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
#72These jobs lost/gained and unemployment statistics, especially on a monthly basis, and when the numbers are so small, are just noise. Seasonal adjustments alone (baseline assumptions on how many people should be employed) make them meaningless, as does the government definition of being unemployed or looking for work. As far as the government is concerned if you have been looking for a job for so long and/or are so d…
Indeed. Something to note is the labor force participation rate keeps dropping. We’re down to 61.4%. It was 61.5% in June 2026, 62.3% in June 2025.
We also have 4.8 million that are part-time employed, but want full-time work. That’s up from 4.7 million last month, and up from 4.5 million in June 2025, and up further from 4.2 million in June 2024.
There’s also 6.0 million that want a job, but aren’t employed. This is the same as June 2025, but up by 800,000 since June 2024.
So if you take the U-3 number (what’s reported) then factor in the other two figures, you really have 10.5% that are unemployed, discouraged, or underemployed.
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The other question never answered is, “How many jobs are needed to create equilibrium?”, or where the employment rate remains stable. That’s NEVER talked about by media or the BLS, but it’s actually not difficult to get an approximate answer.
You’d want to look at population growth rates for 18-22 years ago (as those people would now be entering the workforce), multiply that by the labor force participation rate, and then divide as appropriate for the period. Typically, the US economy would need 140,000 - 145,000 new seasonally-adjusted jobs created every month to maintain a steady employment rate, given its historic and current population growth rates.
Re: U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
#73govt is resetting the baseline now, so we will see some good numbers in November. it's all about optics for mid term.
No. Very bad economic numbers in August before a midterm is not a cunning political optics move.
Re: U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
#74Sudden reversal? It’s been the apocalypse for several years with each year getting worse
Re: U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
#75Re: U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not an expert at quantifying the magnitude of how bad that is, but revision down is not something "exceptional". The numbers have been revised down consistently since ~2022: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/business/economy/economy-...
It does make you wonder if the July shedding of jobs could be lowered even further to ~100k+ jobs lost (since they revise down very consistently).
Yeah, that wouldn't be a surprise.
It looks to me like a failure of the American media landscape, that such constant revisal trends are not called out in the reporting of new numbers. That just makes them a mouthpiece of the government.
Re: U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
#77Re: U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
"And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything…" And I suspect, sometime in the future, we're going to discover that the numbers were even worse than we thought they were—were covered up.
Maybe, maybe not. And when a vast majority of the population isn't working what do these numbers really tell us? If we have fewer jobs, but then the people doing those jobs are paid more and thus paying more in taxes, maybe the jobs numbers don't even matter (I'm not sure that's true, just for arguments sake). And let's say they were covered up. Ok and what does that change? Are people who already hate Donald Trump g…
> thus paying more in taxes
If the taxes were being spent to help those who were not working (unable to or for whatever reason) maybe that would be fine. We might take in more taxes, but when we cut funding for childhood cancer research, and build more missiles... is this really the way we want our money spent?
> Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.
Perhaps there was more overlap 10 years ago, but... that "both sides are just as bad" doesn't seem to ring true.
Re: U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
#79[deleted]
Re: U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
#80firstly :: "economy" cannot lose jobs because it doesn't have any. Secondly :: there is absolutely no way for you to know it.
That’s just nitpicking words and yes you can tell from payroll