{"id":47957,"date":"2025-08-05T21:47:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T21:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/47957\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T21:47:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T21:47:11","slug":"how-us-jobs-data-is-collected-and-why-its-regularly-revised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/47957\/","title":{"rendered":"How US jobs data is collected \u2014 and why it’s regularly revised"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recent data on the health of the nation\u2019s job market cost Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, her own employment after President Trump lashed out when revisions<\/a> to earlier months\u2019 numbers suggested the economy could be in worse shape than previously thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast weeks Job\u2019s Report was RIGGED,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday. <\/a><\/p>\n

The July employment numbers<\/a>, released last week, showed the US added 258,000 fewer jobs in May and June than what was reported previously. Economists were quick to note the changes, while larger than normal<\/a>, are routine, factoring in survey data from employers that\u2019s slower to arrive, while Trump\u2019s actions risk politicizing a crucial economic indicator<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how the jobs report is pieced together and why data within it is regularly updated.<\/p>\n

Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes an \u201cemployment situation\u201d report that includes employment, hours, and wage data for workers on nonfarm payrolls from an \u201cestablishment survey\u201d of businesses representing varied sectors of the economy. The report also includes data from a separate \u201chousehold survey\u201d on the labor force, employment, and unemployment. The report is closely watched by economists, traders, and businesspeople because it can move markets, influence monetary policy, and reflect the overall health of the economy.<\/p>\n

The revisions that upset Trump were from the establishment survey, which relies on a survey of about 121,000 businesses and government agencies across the week or pay period that includes the 12th of the month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/a><\/p>\n

Estimated data from this survey is always revised twice in the succeeding two months after it\u2019s initially published \u201cto incorporate additional sample receipts from respondents in the survey and recalculated seasonal adjustment factors,\u201d the BLS says in a \u201cfrequently asked questions\u201d page.<\/a> Put simply, some businesses are slow to respond, so their survey answers are added as they\u2019re received, leading to revisions \u2014 up or down \u2014 in the estimates of new jobs.<\/p>\n

Importantly, the most recent revisions were within the BLS\u2019s confidence interval \u2014 the measure of uncertainty in its own estimates<\/a> \u2014 of \u201cplus or minus 136,000\u201d for the monthly change in total nonfarm employment, said Ryan Sweet, chief US economist at Oxford Economics. May payroll data was revised down by 125,000 jobs to 19,000 jobs gained, while June was revised down by 133,000 to 14,000 jobs gained.<\/p>\n

Sweet noted that \u201cif you look at the size of the revisions relative to total employment, they\u2019re not significantly larger than what we\u2019ve seen historically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Story Continues <\/p>\n

In a blog post <\/a>earlier this year, Michael Madowitz, principal economist for the Roosevelt Institute, wrote that while revisions can lead to some confusion, it\u2019s worth reflecting on \u201cwhy incurring some temporary confusion, in this case, contributes to the universally respected economic statistics that are central to the long-term stability of the US financial system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BLS is showing its work, he noted, which is a good thing.<\/p>\n

The payroll estimates from establishment surveys are also revised annually to account for wage and employment data from state unemployment insurance tax records. One of these revisions made waves last August when the BLS announced<\/a> the economy had 818,000 fewer positions in the 12 months ending in March 2024 than initially reported, though that revision itself was also revised earlier this year to 598,000 fewer jobs.<\/a> Trump has referenced the 818,000 data point<\/a> as another example of what he perceives as data manipulation to favor Democrats, though it wasn\u2019t exactly great news for the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were pretty devastated that in August of 2024 in an election year \u2014 right kind of in the home stretch there when people were starting to pay attention \u2014 BLS did its annual benchmark revision and found that we had added 800,000 fewer jobs than we had thought at that point,\u201d said Alex Jacquez, a former Biden official and the chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive group.<\/p>\n

A bigger likely problem than data manipulation is fewer businesses answering the survey.<\/p>\n

Response rates for the establishment survey have declined<\/a> sharply in recent years, leading to some worries that the data is becoming more vulnerable to errors.<\/a> Still, researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco wrote in March of the <\/a>monthly employment gains through 2024 that \u201cdespite the substantial decline in response rates, the incoming data are reassuringly not subject to greater noise, and thus greater uncertainty, than in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

But \u201cit\u2019s becoming less of a clear picture of how the labor market is doing in the first estimate\u201d due to the lower survey responses, Sweet said. That\u2019s not a knock on the BLS, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese revisions are normal,\u201d Sweet said. \u201cIt\u2019s the nature of the beast of trying to measure a $30 trillion economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, big revisions have occurred in other times of economic <\/a>weirdness, including the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/a> \u201cThis is why we had massive upwards revisions in the early months of the Biden administration, when a ton of people were coming back into the labor force after COVID lockdowns,\u201d Jacquez said.<\/p>\n

The US indeed has some weirdness right now, including tariffs, business uncertainty, and immigrant workers leaving the labor force.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Major revisions) tend to coincide with idiosyncratic times in the labor market, which would make sense. If there\u2019s a big recession, there\u2019s a bunch of churn and a bunch of things happening in the labor market that wouldn\u2019t normally be captured by the standard analysis and regressions that you pull out of the data,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say the revisions aren\u2019t worth examining, though: the two-month revision was the biggest since 1968 when excluding recessions, economists at Goldman Sachs have said<\/a>, and could point to some strain in the economy.<\/p>\n

Even before the most recent jobs report, economists had been watching for recession risks and a slowing job market, making reliable data all the more crucial.<\/p>\n

In a video appearance on Yahoo Finance<\/a>, William Beach, McEntarfer\u2019s predecessor, said the BLS commissioner has nothing to do with the estimation or preparation of the jobs data, but \u201cthe damage is done\u201d \u2014 people who don\u2019t follow the BLS that closely may struggle to trust the numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to take a long time to recover from this,\u201d Beach said.<\/p>\n

Emma Ockerman<\/a> is a reporter covering the economy and labor for Yahoo Finance. You can reach her at emma.ockerman@yahooinc.com.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Mind Your Money newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here for the latest personal finance news to help you with investing, paying off debt, buying a home, retirement, and more<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo <\/a>Finance<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recent data on the health of the nation\u2019s job market cost Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[33120,8644,45,49,48,33121,46,33119,124,5779,33118,87,32306],"class_list":["post-47957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-bls","tag-bureau-of-labor-statistics","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-data-manipulation","tag-economy","tag-establishment-survey","tag-jobs","tag-jobs-report","tag-labor-force","tag-president-trump","tag-revisions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}