Interpreting Labor Signals in a High-Revision Regime

Ryan Kimmel - Strategist, Macro Asset Allocation

Monthly nonfarm payrolls reporting by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one of the Tier 1 barometers of the U.S. economy, has deteriorated in the reliability of its initial readings as reflected in the increasing amplitude of later revisions to the first prints. Moreover, the BLS over the past year has consistently overstated payroll gains in its initial reports, resulting in downward revisions, sometimes by drastic margins. DoubleLine Macro Asset Allocation Strategist Ryan Kimmel, who in 2025 began writing on the emerging rise in the margin of error in BLS reports, revisits this phenomenon, its causes and effects, and he shares practices developed at DoubleLine to counter the reduced informational value of initial BLS reports.

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