Surprise! The BLS’s preliminary run at the annual QCEW benchmarking exercise reflected a downward revision of 79,000.

The markdown, although far shallower than last year’s record 911,000 downside adjustment, came as a meaningful disappointment. Consensus expected an upward revision of 185,000. A positive adjustment would’ve been the first in four years.

Instead, the BLS delivered a number that nearly matched the most pessimistic Wall Street forecast.

As a reminder, these revisions are a sore spot for a lot of people given the rather dramatic downside skew over the past several years.

The BLS doesn’t update the establishment survey count based on the preliminary revision. As usual, the final estimate will be published alongside the next January jobs report, which is to say in February of 2027.

That said, the implication is that average monthly jobs growth from April 2025 to March of this year was just 11,000, give or take, down from 18,000 prior to Friday’s BLS release.

Notably, the preliminary private payrolls revision was -178,000. So, this readout would’ve been materially worse were it not for an upside adjustment of 99,000 to government payrolls.

The most optimistic guess for Friday’s print called for an overall upside revision of 350,000. Egg on that person’s face.