U.S. payrolls rose by 178,000 in March, more than expected; unemployment at 4.3%

[progree]

64. Private sector job creation was 52,500 jobs/month over last 6 months. Powell said in the clip that after adjusting

for what the (Federal Reserve) staff thinks is "overstatement due to overcounting", there is effectively zero job creation in the private sector.

# Nonfarm PRIVATE Employment (Establishment Survey, https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000001?output_view=net_1mth
Monthly changes IN THOUSANDS
2024 126 135 143 63 45 78 -8 -27 142 -4 116 212 < --PRIVATE
2025 -76 40 67 99 20 -45 65 -20 68 13 72 -7 < --PRIVATE
2026 180 -129 186 < --PRIVATE

Last 3 months: 237k = 79k/month, Last 6 months: 315k = 52.5k/month

Back in December, he said the staff thinks the BLS is overestimating job growth by about 60,000 per month
https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCpresconf20251210.pdf
(search for the word "distorted" where that part begins)

Anyway, so if you subtract 60k from 52.5k, you get essentially zero (actually a bit on the negative side of essentially zero)

Just to be clear, he did not say or indicate that they are "cooking the books" but rather the numbers may be "distorted by very technical factors". And he did mention the big downward revision announced in September as evidence of the job numbers being overestimated.

Various articles I've seen is the one big problem as far as growth estimates too high is the birth-death model used to estimate the amount of net job creation amongst new businesses not covered by the survey.