October 15, 2025
Mike Horrigan, president of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and a former 33-year official at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), offered key insight on NPR’s Marketplace Thursday, Oct. 9, providing context for recent BLS (preliminary) benchmark revision of -911,000 to the March 2025 estimate of total payroll employment in the United States.
Horrigan explained that the negative revision largely stems from the BLS’s birth-death model, which estimates jobs created by new businesses (“births”) and jobs lost when firms close (“deaths”). Because it’s impossible to track every business closure in real time, the model assumes that, on average, employment gains from new firms roughly equal job losses from those that shut down.
Horrigan noted that this assumption breaks down during economic turning points, such as recessions or slowdowns, when more businesses close than open. During these periods, the model tends to overcount jobs, leading to later downward revisions once more complete data become available.
He emphasized that this has happened for three years in a row, suggesting that the U.S. labor market has shown signs of weakening over the past few years.
“I think that one of the things that we need to pay attention to is, what does this mean about the overall state of the U.S. economy” said Horrigan.