US: the reports for 2008 showed 1.88M jobs lost. In fact: 3.55M
US: nonfarm payroll jobs added in the year
The first monthly BLS reports added up, against the same months in the latest data: in the crisis the first figures proved almost half as bad.
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Each month the US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes how many nonfarm jobs were added. The first figure comes from an incomplete survey of employers; it is revised twice in the following months and once a year benchmarked to tax records on payrolls.
By year: blue, the sum of the year’s first monthly figures; orange, the gain over the same months in the latest data. The shading is the revision.
- Sum of first estimates, 2008 jobs
−1.88M
BLS, Current Employment Statistics: first estimates and revisions
- The same months now, 2008 jobs
−3.55M
First estimates: the BLS revisions table (each month’s first publication); latest: BLS data as of October 2026 (series CES0000000001, seasonally adjusted). A year is the sum of 12 monthly changes.
Revisions go both ways; in recessions first prints tend to be too rosy, in fast recoveries too gloomy. Part of the difference is the annual benchmark to tax records and new seasonal factors.
A question for this picture
Markets and the Fed react to the first figure within minutes. What changes when a year later it proves ten times smaller?