David Robinson
Buffalo Next Editor
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We’ve known for a while that hiring in the Buffalo Niagara region slowed to a crawl throughout the spring and summer.
But it’s probably even worse than that.
While the monthly jobs reports – including one released Thursday that showed the region lost 400 jobs in August – show that hiring has stalled out, a federal government report last week provided solid evidence that those monthly reports are too optimistic.
Odds are, the region has been steadily losing jobs, and that’s a sign of a regional economy that is struggling.
“We haven’t seen any major changes since December. Small increases. Small decreases, but really no meaningful changes,” said Julie Anna Golebiewski, a Canisius University economist. “I do expect that it will be revised downward.”
That’s because last week’s report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics – based on the most detailed employment information available to the federal government – found that the Buffalo Niagara region has 2,300 fewer jobs than first reported through March. That works out to about 0.4% of all local jobs.
While the federal report wasn’t especially timely since it only went through March, it made up for its lack of timeliness with its much greater level of detail and accuracy.
The report made headlines because it showed that the U.S. job market had created half as many jobs as first reported. But deep in the data were details about the Buffalo Niagara job market that raised significant concerns about the health of the region’s job market.
A downward revision of 2,300 jobs may not seem like much, but in a region that created just 6,400 jobs in all of 2024, it’s a big deal, especially since we’ve long struggled to create jobs and expand our economy.
The revised data significantly changed the narrative around the region’s job market early this year. Instead of slowly adding jobs, the region started losing them in February and March.
And instead of hiring expanding at a nearly 1% annual rate during February and March, we now know that the Buffalo Niagara region lost around 3,000 jobs during those months – the first monthly job losses in four years.
That’s a sign of a weakening local economy rather than the stagnant hiring that the monthly job reports showed to have started then and continued through the summer. Thursday’s report provided more evidence that the weakness persists, even if it’s likely that those were too rosy.
“They could be slightly inflated,” said Timothy Glass, the state Labor Department’s regional economist in Buffalo. “There definitely is concern there with the weakness.”
Because the revisions don’t go beyond April, it’s impossible to say for sure what the true state of the region’s job market has been during the spring and fall, but based on the revised data from last week, it’s likely that hiring has been softer than we thought. And that means stagnation could have turned into outright decline.
Even before the new revision came out, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York – through a report that tries to duplicate the revision process in a more timely manner – were warning that the preliminary job numbers in the Buffalo Niagara region were way too optimistic.
They already were estimating that the region had about 6,000 fewer jobs in July than the monthly reports indicated. And since the revision showed even more weakness last winter than originally thought, that could bode poorly for the region as a clearer picture emerges over the coming months.
Manufacturing has turned downward with the tariffs causing uncertainty. Construction has slowed as costs have jumped and interest rates have stayed high. Much of the strength is centered in the education and health care sectors.
A few words about revisions. President Trump thrust the issue into the spotlight last month when he challenged the accuracy of revised nationwide job numbers that showed much slower hiring than first reported.
But revisions are a standard practice. They are used to adjust the employment data as more detailed information comes in from unemployment claims, census data and other reports that are far more accurate than the preliminary numbers, which are based primarily on a survey of about a third of U.S. employers.
The results of that survey are reported each month, just as the August job numbers for the Buffalo Niagara region were released on Thursday. They are revised again the following month − July was revised downward by 800 jobs − as the additional data flows in, and the revisions can be substantial, especially for smaller metro areas.
But the biggest change in the local job numbers typically comes in January, when the figures undergo a major adjustment based on an entirely different, but much more complete set of numbers that come out roughly six months later. It’s that set of numbers that the federal government revised last week.
Economists value the monthly reports because they are timely, if not perfect. And the revision last week showed just how imperfect they can be.
For the moment, local businesses aren’t hiring, but they also aren’t cutting back. The number of people filing for unemployment benefits − a timely indicator of layoffs − has been holding steady at fairly low levels for most of the summer, according to state Labor Department data.
But as workers retire or leave for a different job, all it takes for job losses to take place is for companies not to hire replacements.
“At this stage, as opposed to layoffs, we’re seeing more of a trend of not replacing those who leave,” Golebiewski said. “There are many retirements happening, and we’re simply not replacing those positions.”
And that adds up to addition by subtraction.
“We had a little weakness over the month. That tells me there’s definitely some softness in the job market,” Glass said.
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David Robinson
Buffalo Next Editor
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