- Feb 16, 2026
The JERK Report#1: The jobs numbers everyone celebrated are hiding something
130,000 jobs added in January. Better than expected. Headlines called it a surge.
But the entire year of 2025 was just revised down. The BLS replaced early estimates with actual payroll records, and the shift was dramatic: we thought the economy added 584,000 jobs last year. The revised number is 181,000. That’s 70% of the reported growth disappearing.
Here’s what the data looks like when you read it four layers deep.
Position: 130K jobs added. Unemployment 4.3%. Looks solid.
Velocity: Up from 48K in December. But the 2025 average was 15K/month — historically weak outside of recession years.
Acceleration: The jump looks dramatic, but nearly all of it came from healthcare and construction. Everything else was flat or negative. One engine running hot, the others idle.
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Jerk: Federal jobs fell 34K. Financial services dropped 22K. Hiring announcements hit the lowest January ever recorded. Job cuts tripled from December — worst January since the Great Recession.
Most people saw the January number and felt relieved. That’s a position read.
A velocity read says one good month doesn’t reverse a year of near-zero growth. An acceleration read says the gains are concentrated, not broad. A jerk read says watch the hiring announcements, not the hiring numbers — the announcements lead, and right now they’re at historic lows.
The point isn’t panic. It’s paying attention earlier.
I’m not a financial advisor and this isn’t financial advice. It’s a way of reading deeper.
Your five-minute practice this week
Pick one number in your business. Revenue, traffic, leads — whatever matters most. Write it down. Next Monday, do it again. The difference is velocity. We’ll build from there.
This is the JERK Report. It’s new.
Every Monday, I take one signal and read it through four layers of change: position, velocity, acceleration, and jerk. The framework comes from physics. At Network Solutions during the dot-com era, my colleagues and I tracked domain registrations through the first three derivatives. This year I added the fourth — jerk — and it’s become the one that matters most: the earliest signal that something is shifting underneath the surface.