Slade3200
Diamond Member
- Jan 13, 2016
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From Bloomberg:From your link:
"According to the BLS, the share of payroll data collected can rise from about 73% at the time of the initial release to roughly 95% by the third estimate."
There is no reason for a jobs number to go from 250,000 to 14,000. None. The "error" or revisions should never be more than 20%, not 500%. There should be IRS data, like W-2s, and State data, such as state withholding. Combine that data with unemployment claims, and the jobs picture should be fairly accurate.
The downward revision to the prior two months was largely a result of seasonal adjustment for state and local government education, BLS said in earlier comments to Bloomberg. Those sectors substantially boosted June employment only to be largely revised away a month later.
But economists say the revisions also point to a more concerning, underlying issue of low response rates.
BLS surveys firms in the payrolls survey over the course of three months, gaining a more complete picture as more businesses respond. But a smaller share of firms are responding to the first poll. Initial collection rates have repeatedly slid below 60% in recent months — down from the roughly 70% or more that was the norm before the pandemic.
In addition to the rolling revisions to payrolls that BLS does, there’s also a larger annual revision that comes out each February to benchmark the figures to a more accurate, but less timely data source. BLS puts out a preliminary estimate of what that revision will be a few months in advance, and last year [2024], that projection was the largest since 2009