BLS About To Announce Another Huge Payrolls Revision: Here's What To Expect

Two weeks after we first warned readers to “Brace For Another Huge Negative Payrolls Revision, Greenlighting A 50bps September Rate Cut”, first Bloomberg and then Reuters...

... both jumped on the bandwagon.

So for those who did not read our long-form preview of what to expect today at 10am ET - in a nutshell one should expect another huge negative revision to benchmark jobs, potentially as big as 1 million which would make it the biggest on record - here courtesy of Newsquawk is a quick and dirty primer on what to expect.

The BLS will release the preliminary 2025 benchmark revisions to the establishment survey at 10:00EDT on September 9th, 2025.

The final revisions will follow in February 2026, alongside the January employment situation report. Each year, establishment survey estimates are benchmarked to comprehensive counts of employment from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) for the month of March, derived from state unemployment insurance (Ul) tax records that nearly all employers are required to file. Bank of America notes that the preliminary estimate is based on QCEW data covering April 2024-March 2025. Importantly, the September release will provide only the implied revision to the March 2025 level of payrolls, with no historical data yet updated.

The Bloomberg consensus shows analysts expected a print of -682k, with estimates ranging between -250k and -900k. For context, the March 2024 nonfarm employment level was ultimately revised down by -598k in the final benchmark, compared with a preliminary estimate of-818k. Meanwhile, Fed Governor Waller warned he expects the prelim revisions will show that monthly job creation will be reduced by an average of 60k a month, indicating a 720k downward revision on an annualized basis.

Bank of America expects a downward revision of 500k to 1mln, implying that payrolls as of March 2025 may have been overstated by 40k-85k per month on average over the April 2024-March 2025 period. BofA also highlights that revisions for April-December 2025, which matter most for the Fed, will only be available with the final benchmark in February 2026.

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As described in late August, ZeroHedge certainly expects another major negative revision, potentially as large as 1 million..

... which the Trump admin will blame the Obama admin on as part of the ongoing kitchen sinking effort to realign jobs far lower to greenlight a major rate cut by Powell...