July Jobs Shock: US Lost 23K Workers, Below Lowest Estimate, As Unemp Rate Drops To 4.1%

Ahead of today's jobs report, in our payrolls preview we warned that "July Has Emerged As A Very Poor Month For Jobs" and boy were we right: moments ago the BLS reported that in July, the US labor force shrank by a whopping 23K, sharply lower from a downward revised 20K in June (from 57K), and the worst print since the negative 156K in February.

As noted above, the -23K print was below all estimates...

... and was a 5-sigma miss to estimates...

... as the 80K median estimate was missed by more than 100K.

And here come the Biden admin tricks of massive prior revisions: the change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised down by 66,000, from +129,000 to  +63,000, and the change for June was revised down by 37,000, from +57,000 to +20,000. With these revisions, employment in May and June combined is 103,000 lower than previously reported

Yet despite the dismal Establishment Survey print, the unemployment rate actu