Introduction

Welcome to Recruiting Realities, the show that brings you the latest developments and insights in the world of recruitment. Today, we’re diving into the data behind the headlines as your host, Yazad Dalal, Joveo’s Chief Growth Officer, sits down with our resident expert and in-house labor market economist, David Garrett. They’re here to unpack the highly anticipated US jobs report for July 2025 and discuss the surprising and significant revisions to previous months’ data.

Yazad Dalal: Hi everyone, I’m Yazad Dalal, Chief Growth Officer here at Joveo and welcome to Recruiting Realities, where we bring you the latest developments and insights in recruitment. And today we’re speaking as always about the US jobs report, this time for July 2025 with our own in-house labor market economist, David Garrett.

David Garrett: Howdy guys, how’s it going?

Yazad Dalal: I am well! And for our listeners at Joveo, we publish Interactive Insights across all major occupations in the US. You can check that out on our website Joveo.com/interactive-insights. 

So David, the most recent US jobs report came out for the month of July. It caused quite a bit of commotion. According to the report, the US labor market added an estimated 73,000 jobs, which is a lot less than what was expected.

More importantly, a bunch of major downward revisions to the May report and the June report. May went down from 144,000, which was originally reported, to only 19,000 jobs created. And in June, which was originally reported at 147,000 jobs, only 14,000 were created. That’s a combined reduction of over a quarter million jobs and it puts the overall job gains for the past three months at just 106,000. And of course, meanwhile, the unemployment rate has gone back up to 4.2%, where it’s been hovering between 4% and 4.2% for the last few months. Across sectors, we saw some decent hiring gains in healthcare added 73,000 jobs, retail and financial activities a little bit less.

But again, we saw significant job losses in the government sector, down almost 84,000 jobs since January. That’s not a surprise. We know that’s been in the news, the concerted effort by the administration to reduce headcount in the federal government. But there’s one thing I want to point out. Professional and business services lost 14,000 jobs and consulting was amongst the hardest hit. I spent a number of years in consulting.

Yazad Dalal: So I take this very seriously thinking about a lot of my colleagues. There’s been lots of news in the past week about AI tools competing against first year McKinsey consultants… and winning. So, I think the impact on white collar roles is only going to accelerate as these sort of AI tools mature. And then lastly, I wanted to point out in Joveo’s own data, we do continue to see growth in healthcare practitioners. So if you’re a licensed nurse, there are a massive number of jobs available in New Hampshire, Utah, New Mexico, and Maine. But we’re also seeing really interesting growth in data-related roles. Everything from data labeling, which is about training GPTs, paying only $7 an hour sometimes, all the way up to data scientists who might even get up to $10 million a month if you end up with a job at Meta/Facebook. I think someone, David, just signed for a $250 million package. So I’ve got lots of questions for you. Let’s get started.

Yazad Dalal: What are some of the key takeaways from this latest report?

David Garrett: Yeah, I mean, I think for starters, it’s probably best to address the sort of proverbial elephant in the room about the massive revisions.

Yazad Dalal: The ones in May and June. And by the way, those revisions have happened before. That’s because there’s a lag in the responses from the hundred thousand businesses that the BLS surveys every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and then they extrapolate based on that data. And of course, after the fact, they have to report any material corrections once they finally do hear from all the employers they surveyed. That can sometimes take more than a month. And that’s why we see these backwards revisions.

David Garrett: Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah. And, know, the revisions were, I believe, the second largest we’ve seen since the aftermath of the pandemic, when the BLS looked at the 2024 data for that full year and revised jobs by around, you know, 100,000 less. And anyone who has listened to this podcast before has probably heard me say one of my favorite sayings, which is that, you know, I learned it from a professor in grad school, is that all models are bad, some are useful.

As economists, statisticians, et cetera, the model we can build is only as good as the data we have available. We can update our model, our predictions, as we receive more data, adjust our heuristics, look at changes and trends and data and things like that, but ultimately the model will be limited. You can only consider it as what it is: a useful tool or indicator of where things might be, based off of what we have available.

One of the major sources for the change in employment data was due to the BLS overestimating employment in public schooling. I think there was 109,000 less jobs than they originally reported, and that alone makes up around 40% of the revisions.

Yazad Dalal: That’s a big, big dip and I feel bad also if that was a lot of teachers that are impacted there. But what does this mean for the near future? Is it more bad news?

David Garrett: I mean, I think we’re seeing two major things. The first is that there’s a lot of uncertainty in the business community. You know, there’s the tariffs that are off and on again, immigration policy, consumer confidence has declined. And a lot of these are ending up having an impact on hiring decisions. If the July numbers are accurate, this is the weakest monthly gain we’ve seen since the economic recovery began.

And the overall slowdown in hiring rates and wage growth are consistent with what we would call “stall speed growth.” That’s the fact that they’re neither indicative of really a recession or an expansion, but it’s definitely a sign that the labor market has cooled down since the beginning of the year and that companies are being a lot more reserved and cautious than they were previously.

Yazad Dalal: I learned something new from you as always, stall speed growth. A really interesting phrase. Thank you, David Garrett. And thank you to our listeners. Don’t forget to visit us at Joveo.com and we will see you again soon.

David Garrett: Yeah, thank you.

David Garrett: Take care.

Conclusion

Another great episode of Recruiting Realities! Thank you to David Garrett for once again breaking down the complex world of labor market economics for us. The July jobs report, with its surprisingly low numbers and massive downward revisions, truly paints a picture of a labor market that’s hitting “stall speed growth” as companies become more cautious and uncertain. We hope this sheds some light on the current hiring landscape for you. Thank you to all our listeners for joining us! Don’t forget to visit joveo.com for more of our insights and we’ll see you again soon on Recruiting Realities.