A glaring contradiction between the government’s official jobs report and private sector survey data has sparked a fierce debate over the true state of the U.S. labor market.
A Tale of Two Reports
Economist David Rosenberg has sounded the alarm on deeply conflicting March 2026 employment data, highlighting a massive divergence between the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Institute for Supply Management (ISM).
In a recent post, Rosenberg questioned how to interpret the numbers, asking if it was the “best month” or “worst month” for service-sector employment.
The official BLS report painted a resilient picture, showing total nonfarm payroll employment increasing by 178,000 in March. Service-oriented industries drove much of these gains, with health care alone adding 76,000 jobs and transportation and warehousing adding 21,000 positions.
However, the newly released ISM Services PMI Report told a sharply different story. The ISM Employment Index plunged into contraction territory, registering just 45.2%. This represents a steep 6.6-percentage point drop from February, marking its first contraction in four months and its lowest level since late 2023.
This post was originally published here