Friday, March 04, 2005
Those 262,000 Jobs
In Kudlow's Money Politic$, Kudlow says:
PS an email from Rob
Mike;
To be honest and fair, I said that the employment numbers without hedonic adjustments would have resulted in a loss of 24,000 jobs according to gov't stats. That is an accurate statement.
Rob Kirby
Today’s 262,000 payroll jobs increase is yet another data point arguing that the economy may actually be speeding up in the first-half of 2005.Over at Financial Sense University Rob Kirby in an article Send in the Clowns writes that the BLS made some adjustments:
The March 2004 total nonfarm payroll employment estimate was revised upward by approximately 203,000 or 0.2 percent. Over the past decade, benchmark revisions have averaged 0.2 percent, with an absolute range from less than 0.05 percent to 0.5 percent. Benchmark revisions are a standard part of the payroll survey estimation process. The benchmark adjustment represents a once-a-year re-anchoring, based on March data, of sample-based employment estimates to full population counts available through UI tax records filed by nearly all employers with State Employment Security agencies. See the Benchmark Article for further information.Kirby says
Last Modified Date: February 4, 2005
According to the BLS, 11/12ths of this increase was factored into Feb. numbers [186,000]. So folks, on my planet we back 186,000 out of the published 262,000 published number and we now have a grand total of 76,000 new jobs. But we are not done yet. The BLS uses another hedonic measure called the birth/death model. ...an additional 100,000 jobs were added to the headline number published. So backing this number out of 76k and we actually lost 24,000 jobs without the use of hedonics (emphasis added)Mover Mike
PS an email from Rob
Mike;
To be honest and fair, I said that the employment numbers without hedonic adjustments would have resulted in a loss of 24,000 jobs according to gov't stats. That is an accurate statement.
Rob Kirby
