Philadelphia Fed: Job Gains This Year OVERSTATED by 1.1 Million, It Was Only 10K thumbnail

Philadelphia Fed: Job Gains This Year OVERSTATED by 1.1 Million, It Was Only 10K

By The Geller Report

In the aggregate, 10,500 net new jobs were added during the period rather than the 1,121,500 jobs estimated by the sum of the states; the U.S. CES estimated net growth of 1,047,000 jobs for the period.


Anyone who believes anything coming out of government agencies is not just gullible, they’re a danger to themselves (and invariably all of us).

Have you wondered how everyone is broke, yet somehow the Biden economy is on fire, creating all these jobs? Turns out, that was all a massive lie, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve admits. (What totally convenient post-election timing!) https://t.co/r0pQaoiOLg

— Tara Servatius (@TaraServatius) December 16, 2022

Job Gains This Year Overstated by 1.1 Million, Philadelphia Fed Reveals

By Andrew Moran, The Epoch Times, December 16, 2022:

Labor data might have been overcounted by as much as 1.1 million jobs earlier this year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia revealed in a new quarterly report.

According to the regional central bank’s second-quarter “Early Benchmark Revisions of State Payroll Employment” report (pdf), researchers’ estimated employment changes that occurred between March and June were different in 33 states and the District of Columbia compared to the data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

During this period, Philadelphia Fed researchers found that there were higher adjustments in four states, lower changes in 29 states and the nation’s capital, and lesser revisions in the remaining 17 states. This included a 4.1 percent drop in payroll employment in Delaware and a 1.2 percent decrease in jobs in New Jersey.

As a result, employment gains might have been overcounted by more than 1.1 million.

“In the aggregate, 10,500 net new jobs were added during the period rather than the 1,121,500 jobs estimated by the sum of the states; the U.S. CES [Current Employment Survey] estimated net growth of 1,047,000 jobs for the period,” the report stated.

This also means that payroll jobs were flat in the March-to-June span. In addition, current estimates indicate that employment growth was 2.8 percent in the four months since June.

E.J. Antoni, a research fellow for Regional Economics in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, tells The Epoch Times that this “feels like another pyrrhic victory.”

“The Philly Fed data aligns well with the household survey that shows a flat job market since March, contra the robust growth from the establishment survey,” he said. “The seasonal adjustments to the monthly headline jobs numbers this year from BLS have been abnormally large to the upside. December’s number will have to revised down 30% more than normal to essentially balance out the earlier large upward revisions. Job growth was technically ‘front loaded’ in 2022.”

The Philadelphia Fed explained how its calculations differ from how the BLS crunches the figures.

“The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has developed early benchmark estimates of monthly state payroll employment on a quarterly basis to predict the subsequent annual benchmark revisions by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Our process enhances the monthly Current Employment Survey (CES) payroll employment data with the more comprehensive Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) payroll employment data. The CES provides a timely estimate of monthly state employment data, but the QCEW follows about five months later with a more complete picture, covering more than 95 percent of all employers. Our methodology was adapted from an approach pioneered by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and modified to accommodate all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” the regional central bank noted in its methodology explainer (pdf).

Will this force the BLS to revise its figures lower in the coming months?

BLS Caught Overcounting

Critics have charged that there is something wrong with the monthly jobs report.

The BLS report is comprised of two chief surveys: establishment (businesses) and household. The former has recorded stronger-than-expected growth for most of 2022, while the latter has been roughly flat. Since March, the divergence has skyrocketed to 2.7 million workers.

The main explanation for this gap is that the BLS allows double counting. This means it will count every extra job a person possesses as another payroll. The household component does not permit this feature.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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