The job market is weak and getting weaker, top economists says, while Trump looks to the future

The government shutdown prevented BLS from issuing its jobs report for September on Friday, putting outsized focus on alternate gauges.

Data from Revelio Labs, which scrapes professional networking sites like LinkedIn, show a gain of 60,000 jobs last month, mostly in healthcare and education.

But in a series of posts on X on Sunday, Zandi said that “paltry” increase likely is an overstatement as Revelio’s data has been revised significantly lower recently.

Meanwhile, ADP’s tally of private-sector payrolls found that employers shed a net 32,000 jobs last month, a figure Zandi said understates the decline as it doesn’t include public-sector jobs that the Department of Government Efficiency has slashed.

He also pointed out most job gains in the ADP report were in healthcare and big companies with over 500 employees. “Smaller companies are getting hit hardest by the tariffs and restrictive immigration policies.”

Taken together, the Revelio and ADP data suggest there was essentially no job growth in September, Zandi said. That trend is supported by the Conference Board’s gauge of whether jobs are easy to get or hard to find, which fell to the lowest level since early 2021 and points to an increase in unemployment.

“The bottom line is that not having the BLS jobs data is a serious problem for assessing the health of the economy and making good policy decisions,” he added. “But the private sources of jobs data are admirably filling the information gap, at least for now. And this data shows that the job market is weak and getting weaker.”

Wall Street was expecting the BLS report for September to show 45,000-50,000 jobs were added, up from August’s gain of just 22,000. That’s after revisions to prior months cut growth totals sharply and even showed a net loss of jobs in June.

As readings on the labor market turn dimmer while inflation remains sticky, sources told the Wall Street Journal that advisers to President Donald Trump have urged him to focus on data for early next year that should look brighter as provisions in his tax-and-spending package start to take hold.

The White House didn’t not immediately provide a comment to Fortune but told the Journal that the administration “is focused on pushing supply-side reforms, securing trillions in manufacturing investments, and implementing historic trade deals that will revive America’s industrial dominance.” 

The message from Trump’s advisers appears to have gotten through to the president, though he has hinted at an even longer timeline for expecting an uptick in the economy.

“Our big year won’t be really next year—it’ll be the year after,” he told reporters recently.

To be sure, other economic indicators paint a more upbeat picture than labor market readings do. For example, GDP growth is actually speeding up faster than earlier numbers indicated.

Second-quarter growth was revised even higher, to 3.8% from a prior reading of 3.3%, on robust consumer spending. That strength likely continued through the third quarter as the Atlanta Fed’s GDP tracker puts growth at 3.8%.

Growth may not stop at that lofty rate. Stephen Brown, deputy chief North America economist at Capital Economics, said in a note last Friday that the income and spending data should further ease fears that the U.S. is on the cusp of a sharp slowdown.

He also noted that discretionary spending, which typically is cut when consumers are suffering, drove growth. And while gains in spending have outpaced income for the last three months, the August savings rate was still at a relatively high 4.6%, meaning consumers are not yet overextended.

“The rise in real consumption in August means that, given the stronger momentum going into the third quarter, we now have third-quarter consumption growth tracking as high as 3.3%, up from 2.3% last week,” Brown added. “Third-quarter GDP growth will be as high as 4%.”