The overall US hiring impulse was the strongest in eight months in December, a private-sector proxy for the government’s official jobs report suggested.

According to Revelio Labs’ monthly jobs report, which attempts to replicate the BLS’s release using individual-level data from more than 100 million online professional profiles, the economy added more than 71,000 jobs in December on net.

There really isn’t a polite way to say this, so I won’t try: The scope and breadth of the revisions to this series to me render it all but useless, and it doesn’t help that the chart Revelio displays on the landing page for the data doesn’t match the numbers, or least not precisely.

Consider, for example, that the initial read for November showed the US lost almost 9,000 that month. Thursday’s revised tally suggested that loss was actually a 32,000 gain (according to the downloadable Excel file) or a 26,500 advance (according to Revelio’s chart).

Also, the revisions aren’t confined to two months. The whole series gets revised with each release, so take this with as much salt as Warren Buffett (allegedly) puts on his steaks. (If I’m mischaracterizing Revelio’s data, I’ll be happy to stand corrected, by the way. I’m not attempting to cast aspersions.)

All of that said, the data does line up reasonably well with the BLS figures, although given pervasive doubts about that series, I’m not sure that’s a compliment.

There’s the chart which compares the two. Again: Revelio’s first pass at estimating December hiring showed the largest advance since April.

Gains were concentrated in Education and Health Services, Information and Professional Services. That both does and doesn’t align with ADP’s report, which showed fairly robust hiring in teaching and health care, but 41,000 job losses across information and business services.

Disparities aside, both releases point to a stabilization in hiring, as did Thursday’s Challenger report which, despite confirming a very rough year for layoffs, suggested job cuts moderated and hiring plans improved in December.

Meanwhile, initial jobless claims for the week to January 3 were just 208,000. That was up from the prior week, but recall that the initial filers series printed below 200,000 twice late last year around the holidays.

As the figure shows, there’s nothing in that data which points to a wave of layoffs. The four-week average moved down to just 211,750 the lowest since — checks notes — April of 2024.

Continuing claims for the prior week were 1.914 million, up markedly but not worth parsing given holiday distortions (and considering that’s still tied for the fourth-lowest since May).

All in all, Thursday’s third-tier labor market indicators reinforced the notion that US employers are tentatively hiring or anyway not firing.