Economics and public policy professor Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan delivered a blunt assessment of Friday's jobs report, describing it on social media as a significant disappointment.

"That's a big kick in the guts," Wolfers wrote. "Payroll is much weaker, and the U.S. lost 23,000 jobs in March, well below expectations of plus-80,000. Huge downward revisions, too: May now plus-63,000 (instead of plus-129,000), June now plus-20,000 (down from plus-53,000). Very bad news. Revise down your views substantially."

Expanding on the severity of the data, he continued: "Here's why this is so grim. Folks expected jobs growth to slow to plus-80,000, but we got minus-23,000. Also downward revisions to the last two months subtracted a total of -103k. So over the past three months, the US economy created about 200,000 fewer jobs than we had thought."

CNBC characterized the figures as the "second worst number of the year."

The monthly Employment Situation Summary, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the first Friday of each month, is among the most closely watched economic indicators in global markets. The Federal Reserve explicitly monitors labor market conditions as part of its dual mandate from Congress to pursue maximum employment and stable prices, meaning sustained weakness in payroll data can influence the trajectory of interest rate policy.

Wolfers also addressed the revision process itself. Initial jobs numbers are typically rapid estimates. Revisions occur as large employers submit their payroll data, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics updates its estimates over the following two months as more businesses respond, reflecting fuller and more accurate data. Previous calculations, in retrospect, indicated that earlier optimism about a growing labor market was premature, with the positive numbers amounting to little more than smoke and mirrors.

Former Acting Labor Secretary Seth Harris echoed Wolfers' assessment on Friday, calling the report "grim" and arguing that it confirms what many Americans have been experiencing for some time.

"Job growth this year has been extremely weak. Wage growth has slowed down. The wage growth we had has been largely wiped out by the inflation caused by President [Donald] Trump's war with Iran," Harris told MS NOW. "The job growth that we have is overwhelmingly concentrated in a couple of sectors of the economy. Healthcare continues to grow even when jobs decline. In most of the rest of the economy, we're either flat when it comes to jobs, or we are declining."

Harris pointed to what he considered the most troubling statistic in the report: America has lost 1.3 million workers from the job market entirely, with more than one-fourth of that decline occurring since the previous month. The payroll figures in the jobs report are drawn from the establishment survey, which samples businesses; the same release includes a separate household survey that measures the unemployment rate and labor force participation. A shrinking labor force can reflect retirements, discouragement, or workers exiting for reasons unrelated to job availability, and a declining participation rate reduces the share of the population counted as actively seeking work.

"A lot of people are good quality workers who are committed to our country who are being deported because they are undocumented, but a lot of those are people just leaving the job market because there is very little hope of good quality jobs for them," he said.

Harris acknowledged that April's large spike in jobs had given reason for optimism, but said he now feared it may have been a trap rather than a turning point.

"The quarter trend shows us that things are going poorly and it really all began in February when the president launched this war against Iran. That's when inflation kicked up and wiped out workers' wages," Harris said. "That's when job growth slowed down the economy. And then the president piled on by adding tariffs back into the conversation, both with Canada and with the world at large. And that also is contributing to slowing the labor market."