Envisioning Employment: Employment Situation October 2007

In an effort to gain some further perspective on the impact the housing decline could be having on the wider economy, I have added the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) monthly Employment Situation report to the lineup of recurring posts.

Ill expand the lineup of charts in future posts but for now, as a baseline, let’s look at the course that non-farm employment has taken (click for larger version) since 2003.

Notice first that during the early months of 2003 jobs were still contracting a bit presumably in the wake of the dot-com recession and 911 turmoil but then bottomed that summer and turned up for the remainder of the year and has remained in a growth phase ever since.

Also note that this chart captures four separate data-points per month.

The Monthly Initial Result is the value first published in the monthly Employment Situation report while the Monthly “Revised” result is the final revision for that month settled three months later.

The “Annual” Revised Result is published in the January Employment Situation report and revises every month in the prior year.

Finally, the “Final” Revised Result is the value currently published as part of the BLS historical data.

This is a typical routine as the BLS first publishes a monthly result, then revises it over the next two months, then revises the whole year at the beginning of the next year, and finally revises the whole historical series as underlying components are revised.

Notice that in November and December of 2006 there were two dramatic upward revisions that added nearly 1.5 million jobs and that initially the data looked very unusual.

Then in the January 2007 annual revision, the BLS revised back every month in 2006 making the discrepancy less apparent.

Finally, with the “Final” historical revision the data was revised even further making the trend line look fairly well synthesized.

The moral of the chart is only this, the monthly BLS jobs data is VERY subject to revision so use caution before drawing any conclusions one way or the other.

In future posts, I’ll continue to track the revisions as well as break out construction jobs and add other housing related analysis.