It's not year-to-year noise, it's quarter-to-quarter, and there's a seasonal pattern that vanishes if you do year-on-year quarter comparison (see the solid blue

It's not year-to-year noise, it's quarter-to-quarter, and there's a seasonal pattern that vanishes if you do year-on-year quarter comparison (see the solid blue line in the bls.gov chart). The WaPo article only shows the dotted line data from the BLS graph, which is far noisier, but shows two consecutive quarters of decline, which is unusual too.