BLS BS

From The Real Estate Espresso Podcast Victor Menasce

Welcome to the Real Estate Espresso Podcast, your morning shot of what’s new in the world of real estate investing. I’m your host, Victor Menasce.

On yesterdays show we talked about the employment numbers for the US from payroll processing company ADP. The ADP numbers were a weak but in my view accurate reflection of the state of the labor market in the US Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics published their employment report for January.

I’m here to tell you to skip the headline and in particular pay attention to the part most people skip, the revisions. Because right now, the revisions are the story.

The headline for January 2026 says total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 130,000, and the unemployment rate held at 4.3%.

If you stopped there, you might conclude the labor market is reaccelerating. But here’s the problem. In the same release, the BLS tells us that the entire year of 2025, after benchmark revisions, amounted to only +181,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis. Think about that. One month, January 2026, prints 130,000, which is roughly the same magnitude as the entire net job growth for all of 2025. That should make you skeptical, not euphoric.

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