Job Revision Wipes Out 911,000 Positions, Fueling CRE Uncertainty Article originally posted on Globe St. on September 11, 2025 The government’s latest annual job revision landed with a thud, wiping out 911,000 positions from the previous count—a 0.6% drop that marks the steepest adjustment in a decade. The sheer size of the revision is rattling economists, raising fresh questions for commercial real estate and the broader economy, even if the full impact remains difficult to pin down. “This is the biggest one in 10 years,” Christine Cooper, managing director and chief U.S. economist at CoStar Group, tells GlobeSt.com. “It’s not unusual, but it was larger than we have had.” The adjustment, which covered April 2023 through March 2024, will not be officially finalized until 2026. Previous revisions show just how volatile these recalculations can be: the preliminary 2023-to-2024 change came in at negative 818,000, or -0.5%, but was later revised upward to -589,000, or -0.4%. For now, the new figure is the best guide to where the labor market stands. Understanding the revision means reconciling two massive government surveys that often diverge in how businesses report payroll. That complexity has left analysts parsing not only the labor picture but also how the data backdrop might influence Federal Reserve policy. Ian Toner, chief investment officer at Verus, calls the revision part of the “complex data collection environment around labor statistics and the big changes happening in the labor economy right now.” He also points to the softer-than-expected Producer Price Index released the same day as another data point the Fed could use to justify a rate cut at its September 17 meeting. According to CME Group’s FedWatch tool, futures markets are currently pricing in a 92% chance of a 25-basis-point cut and an 8% chance of a 50-basis-point cut. But the case isn’t ironclad. “Core inflation is still around 3%,” Cooper notes, adding that retail fundamentals could slow as businesses wrestle with uncertainty in decision-making. Bond markets, meanwhile, are showing signs of investor nerves. The 10-year Treasury yield has slipped to about 4.05%, down sharply from earlier in the summer. Matthews’ David Treadwell says the decline “will stimulate real estate activity,” since lower yields encourage investment, but he also stresses that it reflects investors seeking safety. For commercial real estate, the picture is mixed at best. Carey Heyman, managing principal at CliftonLarsonAllen, points out that “development continues to face headwinds due to labor constraints and elevated costs, which unfortunately, aren’t likely to resolve quickly.” He adds that even if rates ease, capital markets may remain conservative, with lenders sticking to tight underwriting standards. Others are even more skeptical of celebrating the job-loss revision. “The falling jobs count is only cheered by people looking for a rate cut, but even they may be disappointed,” Jon Siegel, chief investment officer of RailField Partners, tells GlobeSt.com. “In the big picture, anemic job growth is a sign of a weak economy, and all of these revisions are also giving the broader market pause about how reliable these numbers are and if they are being used politically.”