Job losses much worse than estimated

by Meteor Blades
Daily Kos
Sat Oct 09, 2010

Unemployment for the year ending March 2010 was worse than previously stated, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Friday as part of its monthly jobs report. There were 366,000 more Americans who lost their jobs than previously counted. But those depressing numbers, or something close to them, won't be officially added to the final official count until the January 2011 monthly jobs report is released in February. Those aren't the only numbers that demonstrate the economy to be worse off than it appears. But let's go one step at a time.

The chart below includes the BLS's revision.

Last year, in February 2009, another BLS revision showed that a shocking 902,000 more jobs than previously estimated had been lost in the previous year. That was the biggest revision ever, both in absolute and percentage terms, clocking in at a 0.7 percent overall change for the period. In the two previous years, a total 382,000 more jobs than previously estimated had to be added to the numbers. Add Friday's announcement of 366,000 lost jobs that went previously uncounted and, all told, 1.65 million more jobs were lost in the past four years than the BLS's original counts have included.

Such BLS revisions - the benchmark revision - have been standard procedure since 1979. Throughout the year, the bureau relies on a sampling technique that allows it to present monthly estimates of the nation's job situation. The sampling covers some 140,000 business and government establishments responsible for about one-third all of nonfarm payroll employees. This, however, is an inexact approach. So, every year, the bureau undertakes a major revision of unemployment data it has gathered to get a clearer and better calculation of joblessness. The revision is announced in October and finalized in the jobs report released in February. You can read about the methodology behind this revision here.

(More here.)

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