The January jobs report blew away expectations with nonfarm payrolls rising 130,000 for the month and employment surging a whopping 528,000. Admittedly, it can be tricky to draw conclusions from any January report because there are so many revisions and adjustments to the data, but things still look pretty good for workers as we dig through the numbers.

The monster downward revision in the annual benchmark was the largest on record at -898,000. But that’s for the March 2025 Benchmark. Most of that annual revision covers Biden’s last year in office and only the first two months of Trump’s second term.

But the really big jobs story has been the reorientation of the labor market to private sector jobs and the subtraction of government jobs. Here is a comparison of the January 2025 number versus January 2026

The Great Jobs Reset

Our UP economist, EJ Antoni, reports that federal employment is now lower than at any time since 1966, a stat that the White House picked up and blasted out. Keep draining the swamp, Mr. President.