Government Employment

Year-over-year change in federal, state, and local government payrolls. Government hiring has been a major support for headline NFP in recent years, masking private-sector weakness in some periods. Fiscal austerity or DOGE-style reductions would show up here first and could become a significant drag on payrolls.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed via ALFRED (Archival FRED). ALFRED archives each data point exactly as it was first published on release day — before any revision by the reporting agency. The figures shown here are what investors, traders, and policymakers were actually looking at when the data came out. Economic releases like payrolls, GDP, and inflation are often revised significantly in subsequent months; ALFRED lets you see the real-time picture.