(Click on image to enlarge)
Data from the BLS, chart by MishQCEW data for this post is from today’s BLS release .Chart Notes
For more discussion, please see Nonfarm payrolls count jobs. If someone has three jobs, they are counted three times. Employment is binary. You are either employed or you aren’t.However, not employed does not mean unemployed. To be unemployed, you have to be able to work, and actively looking for work.There’s a strict definition of looking that requites an interview or submitting an application, not just doing an online search.
Three Measures of Employment in Thousands
Three Measures of Employment Change in Thousands(Click on image to enlarge)
Mish July 26, 2024:
At the heart of these revisions is a horribly flawed birth-death model used by the BLS. My calculation closely matches an estimate by Bloomberg’s chief Economist.
Mish August 21, 2024:
Do I get to say I told you so? My advance estimate a month ago was 779,000 lower. Bloomberg estimated 730,000.
The reports are not directly comparable, with precision, especially given the jobs vs employment discrepancy.However, my prior comparisons and advance calls suggest we see negative revisions in nonfarm payrolls from 2023 Q2 to 2024 Q2 of well over one million. My initial stab is about 1.2 million to the downside.The BLS Birth-Death model is seriously mess up an/or the BLS is oversampling large corporations and under sampling small businesses.The BLS monthly nonfarm payroll reports are consistent garbage.More By This Author:Motor Vehicle Sales: How Much Is Real, How Much Is Fiction, What About EVs?Retail Sales Better Than Expected With Big Upward Revision Rate Cut Odds Plunge As Powell Signals Willingness To Move Slower
