The need of downward revisions is 100% due to falling and selective response rate to the early survey.

If it's like in my country, it's probably because you have more and more people "self-employed", and the average "small business" went down from 3.8 employees to 2.2 over the last 6 years (made up numbers, but i've read it almost halved which caused a lot of issues).

I think we created a new status for Uber/Deliveroo and other workers to put them out of the category three years ago and it fixed a lot of our employment data issues.

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jeffbee 3 days ago | parent [-]

You seem to be under the impression that these figures are exclusively sourced from employers, but they are not. They are sourced in part from a survey of 60,000 households every month, where each household in the the survey for several consecutive months. Here is some information about non-response rate: https://www.bls.gov/cps/methods/response_rates.htm

	▲	logifail 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> You seem to be under the impression that these figures are exclusively sourced from employers, but they are not. They are sourced in part from a survey of 60,000 households every month, where each household in the the survey for several consecutive months These are two separate metrics, they measure different things, and the figures often differ (unsurprisingly). The BLS "establishment" survey (aka Current Employment Statistics, CES) surveys 120k+ businesses and government agencies, it measures jobs (not people), counting the number of payroll positions. This is "non-farm payroll employment", excluding the self-employed, farm workers, and private household workers. The BLS "household" survey (aka Current Population Survey, CPS) surveys ~60k households, measuring individuals, whether they are employed, unemployed, or not in the labour force. These data are used to calculate the unemployment rate and labour force participation. This includes farm workers, the self-employed, and domestic workers.

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mensetmanusman 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That excuse works one time. After that, you fix incentives and hire competent data gatherers.

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logifail 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> you fix incentives and hire competent data gatherers

You assume the data gatherers were at fault... <chuckle>

These data gatherers work for their government. How do you ensure they're happy to gather and publish data which is essentially critical of that very government?

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chasd00 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I agree, if you can't publish a number that's pretty accurate then you shouldn't publish anything. That's why i wasn't broken hearted when Trump fired that BLS person. If you can't even get close then someone needs to be found that can or at least has the balls to say "idk what the number is, we're not publishing without good data".

	▲	matthewdgreen 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Talk to Congress about this. Publishing this monthly data is a legal mandate, it's not up to the BLS head, and firing the BLS head doesn't fix it.