The federal government overestimated the number of jobs in the U.S. economy by 818,000 between April 2023 and March 2024, as indicated by data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Wednesday. This discrepancy has fueled concerns about a potential slowdown in the U.S. economy.

Economists from Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo had anticipated that the government might have overestimated job growth by at least 600,000 during this period. In contrast, economists from JPMorgan Chase predicted a smaller overestimation of around 360,000, according to Bloomberg.

This downward revision continues a pattern where the BLS has overestimated nonfarm payroll job additions, with the total number of new jobs reported in 2023 being approximately 1.3 million fewer than previously estimated as of February 2024.

ā€œThereā€™s been a clear pattern of economic data being revised down (worse) in the last several years,ā€ E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundationā€™s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. ā€œIt is very similar to the onset of the Great Recession, when the BLS was struggling to keep up with rapidly deteriorating economic conditions. Assumptions built into models no longer represented reality, although they may have just a year or two prior. ā€

Concerns about a slowdown in the U.S. economy intensified earlier in August after a disappointing July jobs report, which showed unemployment rising to 4.3%, an increase of 0.2% from June.

The growing threat of a recession in the United States triggered a global market sell-off, with Japanā€™s Nikkei 225 index plummeting by 12.40% on August 5, marking its steepest decline since Black Monday in 1987. The S&P 500 also suffered, dropping 3.00% in its worst single-day loss since late 2022.

However, both indexes regained much of their losses the following day, with the Nikkei rising by 10.2% and the S&P climbing 1.0%, as reported by ABC News.

The recent downward revision has increased worries that the Federal Reserve may have delayed too long in initiating interest rate cuts, according to Bloomberg.

If the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) continues to hesitate on rate reductions, it could lead to a recession rather than achieving a soft landingā€”an economic scenario where inflation is reduced without triggering a recession.

ā€œWall Street is increasingly waking up to the fact that the economy post-Covid has never been as good as the government bean counters claimed, and a recession may have already begun,ā€ Antoni told the DCNF. ā€œThese revisions are a violent shove in the direction of reality.ā€