|
So, is this
better accountability or more political fog? - KWC U.S. Job Statistics Revamped By John M. Berry, Washington Post
Staff Writer, Thursday, June 5, 2003; Page E01 Normally, investors,
analysts and government policymakers all would be scrutinizing the May payroll
employment figures due out Friday for clues as to where the sluggish American
economy is headed. This week, they may be struggling more to understand the
numbers themselves. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics, which produces the payroll figures, will make several major
revisions this week in the methods it uses to calculate the number of jobs on
U.S. payrolls from a monthly survey of more than 300,000 business
establishments. Some of the changes will make it particularly difficult to
compare last month's figures with those analysts have followed in recent
months, all of which will be revised in a number of ways. "This will not be
a run-of-the-mill employment release," said economist Ray Stone of Stone
& McCarthy Research Associates, a financial markets research firm. "In
fact, the scope of these definitional and methodological revisions is the most
profound of the entire history of the establishment survey." None of the changes
will affect the monthly survey of about 60,000 households on which the national
unemployment rate is based. Over
the past year or so, however, the results of the two surveys have diverged. The
payroll survey, for example, has shown the number of jobs declining while the
household survey has shown a large gain in jobs -- even after taking some
updated population figures into account. One of the bureau's
changes in the
payroll survey, a "benchmark" revision, occurs each year at this time. Using
information from federal unemployment insurance returns that are filed by
almost all firms, the bureau annually updates the data from its sample surveys.
The agency announced earlier that its estimate of payroll employment for March
2002, which was 130.7 million jobs, would be lowered by 313,000. But because of
some of the other changes, it is not clear how much payrolls for recent months
will be reduced. The most sweeping change involves an
overhaul of the industry categories for which payroll figures are published,
with roughly 25 more industries added to the list. For instance, employees of
The Washington Post, heretofore a manufacturing firm, will be classified in a
new publishing industries category, which in turn is part of a new information
"supersector." At the same time, the
headquarters staff at General Motors Corp., also formerly classified as
manufacturing workers, will be shifted to a management listing under
professional and business services. While a few additional workers will be
moved into the manufacturing category, many more will be listed elsewhere,
likely reducing that industry's payroll count noticeably, analysts said The new industry
listings are part of the North
American Industry Classification System, or NAICS, which has been designed to more clearly reflect
the nature of today's economy than did the Standard Industrial Classification system, in place since 1987. Several other
federal statistics, such as the Commerce Department's monthly retail sales
figures, have already been converted to the new system. With the May figures,
the bureau will also complete the conversion to a new method of picking the
firms that are included in the monthly payroll survey. According to the agency,
the new sample is "more representative" than the old one and
therefore statistically more accurate. Moreover, the new approach allows direct estimation of how many firms
go out of business and how many are created. With that data, a less exact procedure called
a "bias adjustment" will be dropped. Yet another change to
be introduced with this week's number is a different seasonal adjustment procedure. Until now, the bureau has adjusted the
raw numbers for recurring seasonal patterns going back for 10 years and updated
the adjustment factors twice a year. The 10-year period will still be used, but
the adjustment factors will incorporate the latest month's data, so they are
updated constantly. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15094-2003Jun4.html?nav=hptoc_b |
