Category Archives: employment

The Household-Establishment Surveys Job Creation Conundrum

A week and a half ago, Kevin Drum noted earlier the disjuncture between job creation as measured by the household survey (civilian employment) and establishment survey (nonfarm payroll employment). My conclusion was that the empirical evidence suggested putting most — if not all — weight on the establishment survey. Now, Torsten Slok compares the declines in response rates in the two surveys. The comparison further buttresses the case for using the establishment series.

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Messages from the Labor Market Release

The recession is (probably) not here yet (nor was it likely here earlier this year), employment likely continued to grow, and real wages are on average higher than they were before the pandemic. First, key business cycle indicators followed by the NBER BCDC continue uptrend in October, with exception of the civilian employment series based on the household series.

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Jobs vs. Employment in the CES and CPS Employment Series

A reader asserts that Senator Johnson, in stating “It’s not like we don’t have enough jobs here in Wisconsin.” means that I should be reporting number of jobs, not number of people employed. However, in the previous post, I was exactly showing manufacturing and nonfarm payroll employment jobs (drawn from the Current Establishment Survey), which refer to the number of jobs, to wit:

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