Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/adp-jobs-report-june-2025.html

by ceejayoz • 1 year ago

520 327 1 year ago

cnbc.com

toomuchtodo4• 1 year ago

https://wellsfargo.bluematrix.com/docs/html/c42ca8a8-178f-40... | https://archive.today/BhC0n

tomrod• 1 year ago

What in the bad-URL-looks-like-phishing-but-appears-legit heck is this?

toomuchtodo4• 1 year ago

Content management system guid I presume, versus a title slug that can drift during editing and publishing. Archive.today link added for the cautious.

hliyan• 1 year ago

Important: "[payroll processing firm] ADP's report has a spotty track record on predicting the subsequent government jobs report"

adrr• 1 year ago

Government job reports this year have been revised down up to 35%.

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for March was revised down by 65,000, from +185,000 to +120,000, and the change for April was revised down by 30,000, from +177,000 to +147,000. With these revisions, employment in March and April combined is 95,000 lower than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

dmix4• 1 year ago

Revised down from previously reported projections. But the numbers are pretty neutral.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.9 percent), adult women (3.9 percent), teenagers (13.4 percent), Whites (3.8 percent), Blacks (6.0 percent), Asians (3.6 percent), and Hispanics (5.1 percent) showed little or no change over the month.

llm_nerd3• 1 year ago

Recent government payroll data has been hugely suspect. On the big release day the numbers are rosy and get reported to much hoopla and "told you" celebration, but then are subsequently revised downwards to little fanfare or notice. And for those who wonder "why revise downward if it's a lie?", because the numbers eventually are going to collide with reality so they need to be right sized after the fact.

k4shm0n3y• 1 year ago

This isn't a recent phenomena

JumpCrisscross10• 1 year ago

for those who wonder "why revise downward if it's a lie?", because the numbers eventually are going to collide with reality so they need to be right sized after the fact

No, this is not the reason. The numbers that get fanfare are the preliminary BLS numbers. BLS collects data through surveys. Preliminary data are published with incomplete responses. As more employers respond, the numbers get updated.

Guess which employers tend to report late? Those that are doing lots of hiring and firing. So the stable numbers come in first. Then the volatile numbers later. This is well documented, happens on the way up and down, and is constantly (and wrongly) quoted as a partisan conspiracy going both ways.

intended3• 1 year ago

Why assume conspiracy, when the reason is known?

jandrewrogers4• 1 year ago

ADP and BLS numbers are measuring different things. For people that care about these things, the nuances are well-understood.

As a rough heuristic, ADP overfits to private sector jobs and BLS overfits to government jobs. There is a popular derivative heuristic that the economy is "good" when ADP > BLS.

daveguy• 1 year ago

There is a popular derivative heuristic that the economy is "good" when ADP > BLS.

Surely that doesn't apply when both metrics are bad? I don't know. I'm not familiar with job reporting statistics. So info / perspective would be appreciated.

Also, when you say "over fits" I'm used to that in a machine learning context where it means data outside the fit is worse. Did you mean that ADP is more accurate with private sector and BLS is more accurate with public sector. Or is it more a matter of ADP comes in higher with private sector and BLS comes in higher with public sector. Usually, "overfit" is a bad thing in a machine learning context, but I wouldn't expect ADP to do worse in private and BLS to do worse in public. But the opposite. I would appreciate it if you could clarify the terminology from your perspective.

psunavy032• 1 year ago

We really need better ways of measuring economic health. I could lose my six-figure job, turn around, and get hired on as a server at Applebee's for minimum wage, and the "unemployment" rate would stay the same. Not to mention that it doesn't include those not actively looking for work.

Either way, "full employment" doesn't mean much unless you take into account whether people are actually able to live a stable lifestyle or are burning the candle at both ends just to put food on the table. One of these enables folks to buy nonessentials and fund all those sectors of the economy, the other doesn't.

onlyrealcuzzo• 1 year ago

That's why unemployment is one of many metrics, and we don't put all our weight into a single metric...

stego-tech• 1 year ago

This has been a critique of the figures for decades, but the current numbers are too convenient for the powers-that-be to change into something more reflective of reality. Trust me, spending fifteen months unemployed in the middle of nowhere and with access to raw data helped me understand a lot about the deliberately engineered shortcomings of our current datasets.

It’s in the vested interest of leaders to control the narrative. That’s why we have/had so many regulations that prevent them from doing so.

thehoff• 1 year ago

The linked article is talking about ADP.

"To be sure, the ADP report has a spotty track record on predicting the subsequent government jobs report, which investors tend to weigh more heavily."

The BLS does do several measures.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...

Their (BLS) news release also provides more detail.

ceejayoz• 1 year ago

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/11/nx-s1-5323155/economic-data-r...

The government recently disbanded two outside advisory committees that used to consult on the numbers, offering suggestions on ways to improve the reliability of the government data.
At the same time, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has suggested changing the way the broadest measure of the economy — gross domestic product — is calculated.
Those moves are raising concerns about whether economic data could be manipulated for political or other purposes.

kasey_junk3• 1 year ago

You of course know that we have a diverse set of metrics for unemployment that capture all of what you are talking about right?

And that is before we talk about alternative signals like the ADP number this like references.

Anytime someone says “we need better ways” you should just read it as “I should do more reading”, because this is a very well studied, understood and measured set of data.

11235813212• 1 year ago

Which metric(s) capture what he is talking about?

Analemma_3• 1 year ago

Yes, it's extremely irritating every time people trot out the same copy-pasted complaints about the BLS unemployment rate and how wrong it is, ignoring the fact that the BLS publishes six different unemployment rates, which specifically address most of those complaints. It's a sign of terminal incuriosity and using only superficial and secondhand sources of information like news reports on the unemployment rate, and thinking this is enough to make you qualified to do critique.

noslenwerdna2• 1 year ago

This response is a bit less than helpful. Could you provide an example of a metric from this diverse set that fits what the OP is asking for? I feel like there are at least two use cases from their post:

* a metric that measures if people's jobs are paying enough to put food on the table

* a metric that measures whether people's employment matches their education?

jklinger4103• 1 year ago

You of course know that we have a diverse set of metrics for unemployment that capture all of what you are talking about right?

If I could never see another passive aggressive response like this again I would die happy.

ajmurmann11• 1 year ago

We have good metrics. The problem is the media seems to only ever look at one of them at a time but we need to look at several at once to get a more complete picture.

Your scenario would be called out by median household income, or better median disposable household income. Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case.

Workforce participation also can be valuable instead of or in addition to unemployment numbers, since you fall out of the count once unemployment benefits expire. However, we need to look at it by age bracket. Lower workforce participation between 20 and 60 is probably bad whereas higher workforce participation over 60 might also be bad.

IMO the problem isn't that the metrics aren't there but that the public discourse either lacks motivation, understanding or incentive to take a proper look. That every discussion of these numbers on social media has a substantial portion of people not understand the difference between median and mean certainly doesn't give me confidence this will ever improve.

psunavy032• 1 year ago

The problem is the media seems to only ever look at one of them at a time but we need to look at several at once to get a more complete picture.

This is what I'm getting at. I recognize there are more detailed measures, but they also never seem to inform the public discourse.

thayne5• 1 year ago

Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case.

Not necessarily. If most of the difference in pay goes to shareholders and/or executives, then the GDP per capita doesn't change. This could be because technology increases productivity, but in a way that increases wealth inequality, and results not only in greater wealth for the already wealthy, but less wealth for workers who are no longer needed.

Sohcahtoa822• 1 year ago

Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case.

Absolutely not.

If corporate revenue increases, but wages stay the same, GDP per capita goes up, yet the workers aren't any better off. All that extra money is being absorbed by the ones at the top.

Median disposable household income is probably the best measure.

kranke1553• 1 year ago

It's the incentive. There is a reason the media focuses on easily juiced metrics.

t_mann• 1 year ago

I think it's time to switch from GDP per capita to household income. You might think the two are practically the same, and globally that's true, but at the regional level there can be stark discrepancies.

One example: Ireland's GDP grew a staggering 25% in 2015 [0], mainly because Apple decided to book more of their profits there. It does lead to higher tax revenue, but creates relatively few jobs or other income there. The profits go to Apple shareholders, who mainly live outside Ireland. Household income would more adequately reflect where those benefits go than GDP.

Plus, with household income it's more natural to look at the median in addition to the mean, which is the more robust metric, statistically speaking.

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

pkaye3• 1 year ago

Workforce participation also can be valuable instead of or in addition to unemployment numbers, since you fall out of the count once unemployment benefits expire.

Unemployment rates are calculated based on surveys. They call many people and ask a series of questions to determine which category they fit into.

bentt• 1 year ago

Nobody is incentivized to share bad news about the economy. Everyone has a vested interest in the stock market rising, in keeping their jobs, and a shared desire to see things go up forever.

This is why there needs to be some kind of safety net so that the economy is not a proxy for life and death. In the USA, if you run out of money, you are in real trouble. We need to decouple success/failure in the market from personal safety. You should be able to try opening a hot dog stand, have it tank, and still be able to eat and go to the doctor.

root_axis• 1 year ago

the public discourse either lacks motivation, understanding or incentive to take a proper look.

Indeed. Almost always in these discussions people have already made up their minds about the state of the economy and will just cherry-pick whatever metric best justifies their case (typically that the economy sucks).

There's never been a time in my life where people weren't complaining about how the economy is terrible and how that's clearly obvious if you just look at the real numbers.

tootie• 1 year ago

Media covers plenty. We call it "headline unemployment" because it fits in a headline. If you read articles and analysis there's plenty of places in the MSM that get into nitty gritty.

hopelite4• 1 year ago

I’m just going to pile on by suggesting you really concern yourself with looking into why GDP is absolutely not a good measure. You may want to start with the fact that the economist that developed GDP has long been outspoken against how it has been used and wished he had never developed it.

The fact that the government printing money and then squandering it on some thing useless makes the GDP go up, should be your first clue.

I don’t think you are a great success in life if you take on debt from organized crime, spend it on hookers and blow, and then tell everyone how rich you are based on how much you spent, i.e., squandered.

layoric• 1 year ago

Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case.

I think the following joke encapsulates the problem with GDP pretty well..

---

Two economists go for a walk in the forest, and having a competitive nature, the first economist sees a pile of bear shit and says to the second "I'll give you $100 to eat that bear shit". The second economist, being one that generally does anything for money, eats the bear shit, takes the $100 and they continue on their walk. The second economist wants to get back at the first, sees another pile of bear shit and says "I dare YOU to eat that bear shit for $100" thinking no way they will actually do it. Not wanting to be outdone by the second economist, the first also eats the bear shit and takes $100.

After walking a bit further, the second economist stops and says to the first "Wait.. did we just both eat shit for nothing??" to which the first replies "No of course not, that would be crazy.. we increased GDP by $200".

---

I can't remember the source of the joke but been around for a while and I may have butchered some of the original details.

pzo• 1 year ago

Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case.

GDP or even GDP per capita is not the best metric. You can sell 100 iphones for $1000 or sell 500 cheap androids for $200 and both countries will have same GDP but I think output and outcome is much better in latter case (you produced 5x more products and 5x more people can benefits and be more productive with those 'tools'). Sure iphone for $1000 is better than $200 android phone but is it 5x better? Same with cars you can sell ferrari or more cheaper toyotas for the same value. We would have to measure how much goods we can produce.

wnc31415• 1 year ago

Quatar has a very high GDP per capita, day laborers may not celebrate.

We could use metrics such as GINI but it also matters to look at qualitative factors such as worker rights etc. to measure well being

blitzar2• 1 year ago

and the "unemployment" rate would stay the same

Of course it would, the percentage of people unemployed would be the same.

six-figure job, turn around, and get hired on as a server at Applebee's for minimum wage

Average wages section of the jobs report would reflect this change.

doesn't include those not actively looking for work

Participation rate section of the jobs report.

Either way ...

Savings rate, hours worked, consumer credit, default rates etc cover all of this.

thayne5• 1 year ago

Average wages section of the jobs report would reflect this change.

Not if someone else at the top got paid more.

marcosdumay2• 1 year ago

You seem to want better reporting of economic news. I would say to vote on it with your pocket and pick a better selection of news sources, but I'm not sure those better sources still exist.

Either way, nearly nobody uses the numbers you see on the headlines for any serious decision.

rexer• 1 year ago

Some of the unemployment metrics do include folks not actively looking for work: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

We really need better ways of measuring economic health.

What would that look like to you? It seems to me no single, measurable metric is going to tell you economic health. They're a bunch of indicators that need to be interpreted.

satiated_grue• 1 year ago

There are a number of other metrics compiled and reported that answer some of your questions, e.g.:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART Labor Force Participation Rate

These are reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

https://www.bls.gov/ces/

mywittyname• 1 year ago

I could lose my six-figure job, turn around, and get hired on as a server at Applebee's for minimum wage, and the "unemployment" rate would stay the same. Not to mention that it doesn't include those not actively looking for work.

This is captured as part of the "U-6" figure for unemployment. The thing is, at a large scale, these events don't matter. They are rare enough to be noise in the grand scheme of things.

The reason the U-3 is the canonical "unemployment rate" is because that is where the core signal is. The bulk of the change in all of the other more inclusive rates is the change in the U-3 scaled by some factor.

But really, your complaint has nothing to do with actual employment, but instead with earnings. Wages are also a metric captured and reported by the BLS and better serve your message.

wing-_-nuts• 1 year ago

This is captured as part of the "U-6" figure for unemployment.

I always wonder how this is captured. For U-3, you could go with the number getting unemployment benefits. For U-6, you'd have to literally call people and ask them, and I've literally never been called to ask if I'm working in my field and I'd guess most of us haven't either. I have to think if they are sampling, it's a very narrow sample likely biased by geography, industry, age, etc.

jordanb2• 1 year ago

U3 is kinda silly but is mostly used because it is the original employment rate definition and therefore is comparable across time.

U6 would not include the original poster unless his new job was "minimally attached or part-time for economic reasons." U-6 does not, generally, include people who got a new job for lower pay.

MangoToupe8• 1 year ago

The harm is when people take the metric as literally "what percentage of people who want to be employed can find a job", which U-3 emphatically does not represent.

wnc31415• 1 year ago

gig work platforms have definitely skewed the traditional significance of U-3

jimt1234• 1 year ago

I think it's even worse, because that single metric, unemployment, is highly manipulatable. Administrations have been known to redefine "employment" in order to make the number look more favorable.

pkaye3• 1 year ago

The U6 unemployment rate is supposed to cover those who are underemployed. What is usually reported is the U3 unemployment rate which is closest to that used internationally as defined by ILO.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE

phendrenad24• 1 year ago

Supposed to, but doesn't. The U6 rate includes two new things: part-time workers, and a very strangely-defined category: people who are NOT working at ALL, AND were looking for work previously, AND have stopped looking for 4+ weeks.

It doesn't capture the common on-the-street definition of the word "underemployment", such as a tech worker flipping burgers at mcdonald's.

Perhaps that category is simply to hard or expensive to measure, or it's specifically being avoided. Either/or really.

bilsbie• 1 year ago

It sounds silly but we should take it one step further and look at life satisfaction. Who cares about jobs if people are unhappy?

Stay at home parents could be way more valuable than more Wall Street jobs.

jandrewrogers4• 1 year ago

It is important to note that life satisfaction and happiness are weakly correlated metrics, quite famously so. One is not substitutable for the other. In particular, life satisfaction is correlated with income at all scales whereas happiness is not.

You optimize for one to the detriment of the other. American culture is atypically biased toward the "life satisfaction" side of that tradeoff.

missedthecue• 1 year ago

What does that tell us? One person could be unhappy because their boss verbally abuses them every day in team meetings. Another person could be unhappy because their decent and fairly paid job prevents them from playing video games. Finland is once again ranked #1 on the World Happiness Index as the happiest country in the world, yet has a suicide rate much higher than the global rate.

I think the bottom line is that there is no one figure that informs us about all questions. But certain figures have strong correlations. People rag here almost daily about how GDP/Capita is a poor measure of x, y, or z, yet cannot name a low gdp/capita country they'd prefer to have been born in. Because GDP/Capita correlates very precisely with higher standards of living.

ikmckenz• 1 year ago

I would expect that data to be mostly noise though, after all, there is pretty strong evidence towards some soft form of "set point" level of happiness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

_DeadFred_• 1 year ago

Not at you personally, but your post being top and active, while not really relevant to the story presented always makes me wonder do people upvote these tangents to prevent discussion on the threads original topic?

JumpCrisscross10• 1 year ago

do people upvote these tangents to prevent discussion on the threads original topic?

No, they upvote because they agree with it.

Just as some people flaunt their incompetence with basic math or civic involvement as a point of pride, it’s somewhat common in tech for folks to hold their lack of familiarity with economics, particularly econometrics, as a point of pride. (If you wanted to bury it, you’d flag it.)

RC_ITR• 1 year ago

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12032196

We do - People employed part time for Economic Reasons.

If what your looking for is 'People with salaries below the highest they've ever earned', then you're just going to get a very noisy metric of sales people on bad commission years, etc.

ipogrjegiorejkf3• 1 year ago

This is like looking at your revenue numbers and choosing to focus on the number of units sold and disregarding price per unit. The government releases TONS of analysis on wages and wage growth (e.g. the "price per unit"). The St. Louis FRED is a great resource.

I don't blame you. I blame the media for bad reporting. If you dig deeper, I can think of a few reasons why the media would choose to focus on some metrics and not others but I'll leave my conspiracy theories for another discussion.

skipants• 1 year ago

If every ex-6-figure worker has to work at Applebee's to make ends meet... then who's eating at Applebee's?

virgildotcodes• 1 year ago

Applebees drops prices to enable their employees to eat at Applebees. Margins fall, wages universally clamped to minimum wage, layoffs hit. Fewer Applebees workers with lower wages means a shrinking demand side of the Applebees ouroboros, resulting in a spiral of Applebees price cuts, revenue drops, layoffs. The end state of humanity is a desolate Applebees parking lot strewn with desiccated human corpses and the last person alive is the largest shareholder of Applebees, inside the store, consuming their own flesh.

observationist• 1 year ago

A big tech company firing a few thousand current employees and hiring twice as many H1B workers shows a net gain for jobs health, when this represents wages dropping, more people unemployed, and has a very negative impact on the economy. Many big companies game the metrics being Goodharted by regulators and watchdogs, and people guilelessly buy into the headlines, without inspecting the reality underneath.

BunsanSpace• 1 year ago

There's also labour participation and underemployment to look at.

In your case underemployment would go up.

You need to look at all metrics together to get a bigger picture. Example is unemployment is down, but so is labour participation. That doesn't mean there was job growth, it means people stopped looking.

Or if unemployment is down, but underemployment is up. Similar picture emerges.

Spooky23• 1 year ago

We know about all of those things and BLS publishes (or at least used to) reliable stats on them.

The unemployment rate as reported is probably the best way to report objectively on employment and the ebb and flow of layoffs and hiring. A more qualitative assessment requires more adjustments and interpretation.

fHr• 1 year ago

Same with the stock market completly decoupled from the real economy. It's a wealthy index, there could be a real recession and the stock market still would go up.

wnc31415• 1 year ago

Stock market measures two things, 1) the performance of firms within their economic environments. 2) the level of savings to be invested in the stock market.

Both are tied to the labor-share of income. That is, how much income is generated through yield on capital (firm profits returned to shareholders, rents, financial services) compared to earned through labor.

This chart inversely correlates nicely with the stock market. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA

vaidhy• 1 year ago

I am a bit confused.. If you are willing to work at Applebee's for minimum wage job, then you are employed. Why should you be considered unemployed?

If you all you can find are the minimum wage jobs and you choose not to work there, then you should be considered unemployed and if you are long term unemployed, U6 captures that.

ajsnigrutin• 1 year ago

Politicians can keep lying that the economic situation is great, because the number of unemployed is not rising.

Meanwhile he can't afford rent, even though statistics show everything is ok.

ivape3• 1 year ago

Why do we care so much if jobs are created or not created? The market is the market, either we need more jobs or we don't. If there are not enough jobs, then what are we going to do? Create more? We're just dressing up socialism in capitalism's clothes. If you want to seriously do capitalism, then there is absolutely no reason to measure employment. If it's zero then it's correct, if it's 100% then it's correct, the number is always correct.

The problem isn't employment. It's food and shelter. Why do we care so much if people have jobs? Because in America you will die homeless and starve without one. The core issue is much further down Maslow's hierarchy.

The food and housing are too expensive so much so that we are now flabbergasted by the reality of the end game of this system, and we're trying to use euphemistic metrics to broom the larger issue (food and a roof) under the bed. The situation is so bad that a large percentage of Americans are absolutely fine dragging anything that resembles economic competition (immigrants) by their fucking ears off the street, mom dad and child, and dumping them in some random country. The larger US population is unable to cede even an ounce of empathy because their wallets are held hostage by a loan-based society/growth-oriented pricing (my house MUST be worth 40% more since I bought it - really? I see.). We're at an inflection point.

This could be a false analogy, but I'll throw it out there. Imagine a startup that cannot sell their product because it simply sucks. Now imagine not coming to terms with that and doing relentless A/B testing and pointing at the data from that. You won't solve shit with that data, go back to the drawing board.

Infinite growth and infinite "go work more and harder" doesn't sound like the path forward for America. This is very much a "work smarter" situation, because you have to be stupid to keep buying that paradigm. The deal we made with capitalism had nothing to do with annihilating our core conscious of feeding and housing everyone. Capitalism was never supposed to eradicate that human virtue and certainly not add a layer of "must have money and must have job" to stay dry/warm and not hungry, and at the very least not be in constant financial anxiety (which is the day-to-day psychological torment the average American faces).

Another way to interpret employment numbers is to simply meditatively say out loud "There's 70k people this month that are on the rails because this society is that cut-throat about money for literally everything, down to the bagel, down to the roof".

----

Anyway, the new bill congress just passed targeted SNAP, so we definitely cut off more people from affordable food. This entire country is going to need something like SNAP for 300+ million Americans in about 10 years, so we'll all get to watch the poetry of this one.

JumpCrisscross10• 1 year ago

if there are not enough jobs, then what are we going to do? Create more?

…yes.

problem isn't employment. It's food and shelter

We track these. And in most places in America, you can get to a place where you can get both for free. Not to the quality most people want. But to a degree that will sustain you.

SlightlyLeftPad• 1 year ago

I may be one of those statistics soon. My company refuses to lay people off but they are sending people out via wildly unrealistic expectations (move the goal post). The job market for six figure salaries is weak and I imagine many companies are doing this very same thing.

ed_elliott_asc• 1 year ago

Total wage $ would cover it.

mr_toad• 1 year ago

It’s called under-employment. It has been widely discussed in the literature but it’s very difficult to measure. Economic statistics do suffer somewhat from a lamplight effect.

RayVR2• 1 year ago

BLS reports breakdown changes in employment by sector. This is obviously watched closely by investors.

whatareyouon• 1 year ago

There are six kinds of unemployment stats the US tracks (below). Nothing sounds specific to underemployment by skills specifically (maybe u-6?). That would probably come from other metrics, like quintile income distributions shifting downwards?

You didn't ask, but just in case (from an internet search):

U-1: Long-term unemployed

* Definition: People unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percentage of the civilian labor force.

* Purpose: Measures persistent unemployment.

U-2: Job losers and temporary workers

* Definition: People who lost jobs or completed temporary jobs, as a percentage of the labor force.

* Purpose: Captures recent layoffs and temp contract ends.

U-3: Official unemployment rate (headline rate)

* Definition: Total unemployed as a percentage of the civilian labor force.

* Purpose: This is the standard "unemployment rate" reported in news and economic discussions.

* Limitations: Doesn’t count discouraged workers or part-time workers wanting full-time jobs.

U-4: Unemployed + Discouraged workers

* Definition: U-3 plus discouraged workers (those who want a job but stopped looking because they believe no jobs are available).

* Purpose: Adds a layer of marginal attachment to the labor force.

U-5: Unemployed + All marginally attached workers

* Definition: U-4 plus all others marginally attached to the labor force, not just discouraged workers.

* Marginally attached workers: People not currently working or looking for work but who want a job and have looked in the past 12 months (but not the past 4 weeks).

U-6: Broadest measure

* Definition: U-5 plus part-time workers who want full-time jobs (i.e., involuntary part-time workers).

* Purpose: The most comprehensive measure of labor underutilization, including: Discouraged workers, Marginally attached workers, and Underemployed part-timers

hopelite4• 1 year ago

I agree, among the many things that need way better measurements, chief among them besides unemployment, being economic preference, is an alternative to the nonsensical GDP.

But regarding unemployment, another absolutely bizarre fact of that measure of whether people have a means of producing in order to be compensated and become consumers, is the fact that is an American citizen loses his job and cannot find one after 90 days… poof, he’s not counted and therefore the unemployment rate increased. Furthermore, if now a foreign person comes into the USA, whether legally or internally, and is employed, the unemployment rate decreases, and it is not really captured that the lower wage the foreigners are willing to take, also further undermines all other wages.

Frankly, we should really be assessing why the heck we are even allowing ourselves to be managed as a vector in a database of numbers like some widget. The only real reason the ruling class cares about the “unemployment rate” is primarily to gauge whether they need to put more bodies on the fire to suppress wages and keep the anxiety and stress of the peasants competing high enough to keep profits maximized.

If it was actually “we need high skilled workers, the ruling class would have done things a long time ago to foster developing high skilled workers over the last 30+ years that they’ve been complaining about that while just using it as an excuse to fall back onto their old ways of importing brown people to suppress wages and to serve them and their decadent lives. “Who will cut our grass and raise our children” they cry out, just like when their slaves we’re taken from them.

duncangh• 1 year ago

I have been thinking about this a lot recently as well and think there is a really simple answer and fix and am frustrated I haven’t seen it meaningfully attempted or discussed anywhere (passively consuming message boards etc)

Cash flow per person (per household) just like the IRS does (except also including money from loans).

vitorgrs2• 1 year ago

Unemployment might say the same, but there's also data about wages, so, not sure what do you mean.

intended3• 1 year ago

This is a citizenry education problem, a media problem but not a metrics problem.

These metrics are built and used by people who do apply multiple measures - every day. If you are in a trading or macro oriented role, you will not be using just one figure. You will make the effort because your incentives and training encourage you to do so.

The non-specialist, which is most people, is never going to have a set of metrics which make it easy, because no metric can overcome all the practical and technical issues strewn across the path to producing it.

mrangle• 1 year ago

Full employment transitioning to mean middle class job, or replacement income, would be wild.

Point the way to the line for rigid economic class assignments.

wnc31415• 1 year ago

Of course we have alternative measures of unemployment but they're harder to measure and read.

There's something about the so-called "vibecession" - that people might be better at measuring their own circumstances than macroeconomic data provides. In hindsight this is sort of an obvious take.

Real wages and high quality full-time employment have declined, but more importantly wthat people use to measure well being such as career outlook and price of "joy" expenses (concert tickets, hobbies, travel etc.) has significantly contracted or outpaced inflation.

Author Eugine Ludwig wrote this great article for political a few months ago. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-...

Another article on what it means to be priced out of a hobby. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/04/hobby-inf...

Lastly, rep. Ocasio-Cortez struck me with a description of this socio-economic climate on NPR's morning edition a while back. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/28/nx-s1-5306406/alexandria-ocas... In short, she noticed that "everything feels like a scam" - that is, digital distribution has enabled more complex fees, price discrimination, offerings are better optimized for profitability etc.

creer• 1 year ago

These are statistics. 1. It's not a problem if one of them does not reflect you specifically. 2. You never use just one. It is a problem if the measure needs ongoing adjustment to keep some kind of meaning and if this adjustment is partisan. It's also a problem if someone reads one number just to make a point.

jimbokun• 1 year ago

But the contraction was capped by payroll expansions in goods-producing roles across industries such as manufacturing and mining. All together, goods-producing positions grew by 32,000 in the month, while payrolls for service roles overall fell by 66,000.

Is this tariffs working as intended?

danans7• 1 year ago

If your metric is "more/better jobs", then yes tariffs are a failure.

But in a roundabout sense ... yes they are working. At least if the goal is to discipline and squeeze labor, and return leverage to employers.

Part of the goal of the tariffs (and other non-tariff related policies) seems to be to reset leverage at all layers of the labor markets, pushing higher skilled and paid workers into lower skilled and paid manufacturing jobs by increasing the labor availability pool (primarily via workers being unable to get jobs at their previous skill/salary level).

For example, imagine a former software engineer taking a lower paid job as an IT admin at a mining company.

Similarly, cutting Medicaid benefits and adding work requirements could trigger increased availability of the lowest skilled labor, thereby reducing the wages that people doing that labor can demand.

That is all a boost for employers seeking lower cost but high skilled labor, but a knock down for all the workers.

elcritch• 1 year ago

If more goods are made locally then it seems rather that unions would have more leverage. They’re not competing with underpaid foreigners in countries with even less unions.

The bigger loss for all employees is the shareholders primary fallacy giving executives excuses to pay workers less. Since there’s no competition for many consumer goods then there’s no pressure to keep prices low and companies just up their profit margin.

The loss in IT / software jobs are again mostly profiteering using AI as an excuse.

pqtyw• 1 year ago

imagine a former software engineer taking a lower paid job as an IT admin

Is the implication that the software engineer lost his job because of the tariffs? Because all other things being equal (which they are obviously not) tariffs would increase the demand for labor in an non-export driven economy like the US.

seeking lower cost

Well they certainly aren't supporting increased tariffs if that's what they want.

underlipton2• 1 year ago

Unless workers unionize and demand higher wages.

High-prestige work as an escape hatch from poverty has failed, and that may be a good thing. When people accept that dirty or "unskilled" labor has to be done, and that it deserves a living wage as much as any educated position, we'll be stronger as a country. Perhaps we'd even see, with the influx of people who haven't yet accepted being stuck in monotonous, menial labor and with an outsider's perspective, a renewed emphasis on bottom-up innovation and efficiency-creation.

ActorNightly• 1 year ago

At least if the goal is to discipline and squeeze labor, and return leverage to employers.

The goal originally was for Trump to become the center of attention worldwide. This is pretty much the only reason tarrifs are in place.

gruez5• 1 year ago

But in a roundabout sense ... yes they are working. At least if the goal is to discipline and squeeze labor, and return leverage to employers.

I can't keep track of how many times how "X" is some sort of dastardly ploy to oppress workers, only for (different?) people to argue that "not X" also oppresses workers, with plausible sounding stories for both sides. Last time it was work from home. Is is a dastardly plot to subjugate workers by exposing them to international competition, and dehumanize them by making every interaction mediated by a glowing rectangle? Or is return to office a dastardly ploy by the capitalist class to regain leverage, by forcing workers to waste time commuting, getting distracted in open concept offices, and buying overpriced lunches?

The same is true for Tariffs. In the 2010s it was not unpopular for leftist types to say how globalization was a disaster for the American middle class, and how it only enriches capitalists. Now you're saying that tariffs were actually some sort of 5d chess move by the capitalist class to crash the economy, so they can subjugate workers? Nevermind that the capitalist class seemed pretty against the tariffs, given how much stock market dropped, and only recovered after Trump walked back on his tariffs. That's not to say something is wrong just because there's a plausible sounding argument for the opposing side, but it does mean you need to do more legwork to prove your point than to tell a nice story.

InkCanon• 1 year ago

As a way to shift labour into less productive, lower paying industries? Yes.

krapp• 1 year ago

Americans yearn for the mines.

analyte123• 1 year ago

The ADP payroll report is noise. It is based on the payroll data from ADP only. The assumption of this report is that companies that use ADP to process their payroll are completely representative of the entire economy and that there is no regional, sector, or company stage bias to their customers. A firm with ADP laying employees off and 3 new firms with the same number of employees being founded and using a different payroll provider would be reported as a "loss" here. Maybe the private sector did lose jobs, but I wouldn't use this report to find out.

chc4• 1 year ago

ADP say that they handle payroll for one in six of all companies in America. That is both a large sample size, and probably broadly representative of the economy. There will of course be some business segments that are over or underrepresented but that is different than disregarding the entire report as noise.

eastbound• 1 year ago

ADP is predominant in large companies and has little hold in startups. It skews the stats.

shkkmo• 1 year ago

That is both a large sample size,

It doesn't matter how large your sample size is if your sampling method is biased. This could be measuring market share gain/loss in different segments of a steady employment environment.

disregarding the entire report as noise

Studies with bad / non public sampling methods should be, at a minimum, treated with great skepticism. Why would that not apply here?

chasd00• 1 year ago

ADP say that they handle payroll for one in six of all companies in America

that's less than 20%. If you had 10 people to interview and interviewed 2 of them i wouldn't say you interviewed a representative sample of the 10.

WillPostForFood2• 1 year ago

ADP reported a meager 29,000 increase in new jobs, but the BLS showed a much larger 139,000 gain. April also showed a similarly wide gap between the two reports.

Through the first five months of 2025, the difference between the two reports has averaged a whopping 63,000 a month.

source: https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20250702107/be-...

ADP has always been out of sync with BLS numbers. Here is an article in the Atlantic all the way back in 2011 talking about it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/05/chart-o...

jeffbee• 1 year ago

There have been many instances of ADP and BLS job reports being out of step, which can be expected because of their differing methodologies. On the other hand, nobody with a brain can take BLS surveys at face value under these circumstances.

csomar• 1 year ago

It depends on how randomly representative it is. If it is close to random, then it's better than most poll data.

jjk1665• 1 year ago

Noise is the absence of a signal. A biased signal is fine, just account for the bias.

ADP is huge and covers a broad range of sectors. It would be a very interesting result (and a very extraordinary claim) if the employment data from non-ADP companies went in the opposite direction of ADP. I certainly see no evidence that firms underrepresented in ADP's data are hiring prodigiously.

JumpCrisscross10• 1 year ago

assumption of this report is that companies that use ADP to process their payroll are completely representative of the entire economy

No such assumption is made except by an errant reading of the report. The ADP report [1] can be used to predict BLS numbers, but it’s also independently useful. The reason the headline is 33,000 private-sector jobs were lost is because 33,000 private-sector jobs were lost, ADP can directly count that.

[1] https://adpemploymentreport.com/

realo• 1 year ago

For completeness, I would suppose those are USA jobs...

Not Canadian or EU or South America or SouthEast Asia etc etc jobs.

Is it too early to link that bad economic performance with the catastrophic management style of their current administration?

guywithahat• 1 year ago

They're US numbers, and they're from a private HR firm, not government numbers. It doesn't mean they're not meaningful, but they are a biased sample towards large companies using the HR software in US employment

quantum_state• 1 year ago

When the government is robbing all consumers with tariffs, more bad news will come …

giantg24• 1 year ago

I'm about to lose my job too. The job market looks terrible.

jjtheblunt2• 1 year ago

Don't lose hope; I left grad school right before the first dotcom failures 25ish years ago. I think you'll find that when some novel technology erupts onto the scene, the job market goes through a shift of semi incoherence, that hits folks like us.

but, it's temporary and can introduce a way more enthralling era of jobs.

giantg24• 1 year ago

I think between agism and ableism probably won't get another developer job.

zzgo• 1 year ago

I've been unemployed for months. In the last couple of weeks, I've been rejected for jobs as a pool cleaner, shelf stocker, and a state job requiring me to check multiple email accounts and watch security cameras. I've also recently been rejected as an overnight courier and software tester.

Whatever you imagine the job market to be like, I assure you it's worse.

octo888• 1 year ago

Shelf stacking requires psychometric tests, another online test, a group assessment, individual assessment then 3 hours of free labour on the shop floor for another assessment! What world are we living in

giantg24• 1 year ago

I assume will end up working at Walmart or something. I have a disability, so I think the market looks even worse to me.

hopelite4• 1 year ago

I hope you have saving to draw on. It’s been very bad for folks AB’s it’s only going to get worse from here.

I know people who don’t have to work so they have all but stopped even trying since they are just enjoying a kind of mid life retirement and working on whatever the heck they want to, including mental health and those projects they put on the back burner.

underlipton2• 1 year ago

The fun part is when it's revised down 60,000 in two months.

programmertote• 1 year ago

Just one data point to add -- the small firm (~150 ppl) I'm currently working at recently laid off 25 people. The reasoning was there are dark clouds in the horizon in the housing market (the company is related to real estate btw).

dyauspitr• 1 year ago

This administration will drag this country into the gutter.

JumpCrisscross10• 1 year ago

The actual report: https://adp-ri-nrip-static.adp.com/artifacts/us_ner/20250702...

Goods-producing companies were net hirers (+32,000). Services lost 66,000 jobs, with losses concentrated in professional/business services (-56,000) and education/health services (-52,000).

Regionally, losses were concentrated in the West North Central Midwest (-28,000), South Atlantic (-21,000) and Mountain states (-20,000). (Map with old data [2].)

Firms with 1 to 50 employees and 250 to 499 employees laid people off while smaller mid-size and large companies were net hirers.

“Year-over-year pay growth for job-stayers was little changed for June at 4.4 percent compared to 4.5 percent in May. Pay growth for job-changers was 6.8 percent in June, down slightly from 7.0 percent last month.” (Pay growth was highest in finance, +5.2%, and lowest in information services, +4.1%.)

[2] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtCw0itWYAQSzri.png

bix6• 1 year ago

So rate cut incoming? :p

issafram• 1 year ago

I used to have multiple recruiters reach out to me daily on LinkedIn regarding software engineering positions.

And this was for multiple years.

That hasn't been the case for the last 3 or 4 months.

None of this surprises me and it shouldn't for others.

zdragnar• 1 year ago

Odd, it's gotten better for me over the last 3-4 months. The year or two prior to roughly March 2025 were very quiet, though, maybe 1 a month at most.

dmix4• 1 year ago

Have you used your linkedin profile? If you're looking for a job or are active you're going to get more attention. Your name will also start being added to lead databases when you apply for jobs and those will kick around for a couple years until it's marked as uninteresting.

bgnn3• 1 year ago

It's crazy hot now in semiconductors. Anyone with couple of years experience is approached by recruiters daily.

mixmastamyk2• 1 year ago

Is experience in electronics enough to work in that?

sydbarrett74• 1 year ago

The media should be reporting U6 and labour force participation rate, not U3.

ipogrjegiorejkf3• 1 year ago

ADP is usually off by a good amount. Wondering why the jobs report posted today isn't trending but this story still is? https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/stock-market-today-live-upda...

the_real_cher2• 1 year ago

this confusing because it was posted that jobs were gained?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/business/what-to-know-abo...

atraac• 1 year ago

I've applied casually to around 30 listings(I'm EU based) throughout last 2-3 months, all of which I was almost a perfect candidate for(9 years total exp). I received 2 automatic 'no's and 1 phone call + assignment for which I'm still waiting for a response. Everything else straight up ghosted me, not even confirmation emails of received resumes. Some of those companies even re-newed their listings afterwards. I feel like 80% of job listings are just straight up fake to keep VC's believing.

more_corn• 1 year ago

At least the public sector is strong.

Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

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