Non-farm payrolls benchmark revisions -818K

Economists widely estimated that US non-farm payrolls would be revised lower from the prior numbers showing 2.9 million jobs added in the year ending in March, or 242,000 per month. Goldman Sachs had floated a range of 600K-1M job losses.

This would put the monthly average at 174K, a decline of 68K jobs per month.

One critical caveat is that these revisions are based on a reconciliation with initial jobless claims, which don’t include illegal immigrants. Given the surge in border crossings, the non-farm payrolls numbers may be a better measure of actual job creation, because they aim to capture all hiring, including illegal immigrants.

This release was a mess as it was out more than 30 minutes later than expected and there were all kinds of rumours, including this one which was out way ahead of time.

I detailed the rumours and reports here.

In any case, the percentage revision to employment is 0.5%. The bulk of the losses were in professional and business services.

• Professional and business services sector sees whopping 358K cut
• Leisure and hospitality down 150K, manufacturing loses 115K
• Some silver linings: Health/education adds 87K, transportation up 56.4K
• Government employment essentially unchanged (+1K)

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.