Indulge me in a quick rant.

Knowing the jobs report is one of the Fed’s key data points for rate decisions… why didn’t they wait to meet after the July numbers came out? Delaying the meeting by one week could’ve changed the entire outcome. If the Fed had seen this report beforehand, there’s a good chance they would’ve cut rates last week.

We’re talking about a $28 trillion economy—now stuck with higher rates for two more months because of a poorly timed meeting. The Fed meeting was last Wednesday and the job report came out on Friday.

And that brings us to the report itself.

The July jobs report was soft, but the real story is in the revisions. May’s payroll numbers were slashed by 125,000 (from +144K to +19K), and June was revised down by 133,000 (from +147K to +14K). That’s a total of 258,000 jobs erased from earlier estimates.

If the market had been operating off these real numbers, the Fed would’ve already acted—and mortgage rates would be lower. We did see rates drop on Friday when the report came out but the market puts more weight on new numbers and not so much on revisions.

So where do we go from here?

I know I always say the next jobs report is important—but this one is really important. Labor data tends to weaken gradually… and then suddenly. If we keep seeing job numbers like the past few months, the Fed could (and should) cut aggressively.

Recap:

• Job numbers came in lower than expectation for July

  Verify your mortgage eligibility (Aug 29th, 2025)

• May & June revised lower by 258,000

• Next Fed meeting not until September 17th

• Rate cut is expected for that meeting