US employment falls by 818,000 in latest government revision
finance.yahoo.com
finance.yahoo.com
The first estimate is “based on a monthly survey of about 560,000 worksites” [1]. While this is fast, “many businesses do not have their payroll data ready to report by the scheduled date that BLS initially releases the data.”
The second estimate, this one, incorporates “state unemployment insurance (UI) tax records that nearly all employers are required to file” [2].
These data keep getting updated as survey figures come in, all the way to tax filings the following year. Because the easiest response—to a survey or for filings—is “no change,” the employers making the most changes, whether hiring or firing, respond and file the latest. That makes the figures lagging. When the economy is booming, the numbers are revised up. When it’s falling, down.
Those who can read the data know this is natural, given the methodology. Those who cannot see conspiracy in a cover-up (when numbers are revised down) or the deep state not giving their team credit (when up).
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/revisions-to-jobs-numb...
[2] https://www.bls.gov/ces/notices/2024/2024-preliminary-benchm...
Statistical illiteracy in American early (EDIT: primary) education. The magnitude of this revision, for example, is -0.5 percent.
Anyone who makes estimation of economy with a tolerance of MAGNITUDE 0.5% should be fired.
Won't bother to recheck, me that is.
This commentary isn’t necessary. It’s also odd, as no country teaches statistics in early education.
1. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/revisions-to-jobs-numb...
2. https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/sep/12/revisions-job...
This article: https://recruitonomics.com/revisions-to-the-job-numbers-may-... Posits that indeed during recessions, most revisions are negative, and the reverse is true for economic booms.
So if we think maybe there's some kind of recession in the 2020-2024 time range it might be expected to see a series of downward revisions.
The more tender point is whether these ongoing downward revisions are simply the nature of the beast, or if someone is pressing their thumb and cheesing the numbers a bit to give the impression of no-recession. This is a tender point because some of the unemployment metrics are sus i.e. "people who have been looking for a job for 1-9 weeks, but not more, and it's a full moon on a Tuesday". The more that diverges from (100% - <Definitely employed %>), the more that definition of unemployed is cheesing it. But if the numbers are getting tuned up over here, it's natural to suspect the same party is tuning up numbers over there too.
A weak example is keeping people on payroll who may not have active contracts. There's no reason to purge them if they're eligible to resume working (within the allowed period, which may be, say, 12-18 months), but it's not strictly fair to count them as being employed in the same way as a traditional 12 month FT hire.
Last year, we purged over a thousand people from payroll who hadn't officially separated. Unusual, but not abnormal. Who would call that a conspiracy?
I think it's convenient to lie in aggregate, especially when "job creation" and high payroll counts loosely correspond to economic growth and if not eligible voters, then at least tax revenues.
If you’d bother to spend any time learning about how this process works, you’d hold a different opinion.
It increases innovation, increases jobs, increases labor movement, and decreases inflation.
I'm of the opinion that a great deal of the last round of inflation was companies realizing their cartel power to set high prices because meaningful competition is so rare.
We like will be onshoring or near shoring more production in the coming decades and large cartel powers are less likely to do so because of sunk costs.
... It won't happen though.
Military procurement is a bad source from which to project all American manufacturing. You’re also comparing a quality problem (USAF) to a quantity problem (closing shipyards).
I'd also like to see FDA requirements for at least dual-sourcing for all prescription medications and at least 50% domestic production.
While these won't force the large conglomerates to break up, it would allow for at least some opportunities for local and upstart competition. A lot of it makes sense strictly from a defence of supply lines PoV. Which should have been a set of major lessons learned from COVID.
I also do favor heavier tariffs in trade with nations that don't have similar work standards and/or use non-criminal citizens/residents effectively as slaves.
On top of all of that, yeah, the FTC needs to break up some of the massive conglomerates.
A state may be limited in things transported through the state, not necessarily into/for the state.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/sae/seasonal-adjustment/
> Seasonal adjustment eliminates the part of the change attributable to the normal seasonal variation and makes it possible to observe the cyclical and other nonseasonal movements in CES State and Area series.
News from 2 days ago, discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41311519