In 2023, the federal government overestimated the number of jobs in the U.S. economy by an average of 105,000 per month, totaling 1.3 million jobs, as per Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
The revisions were influenced by new seasonal and census data, resulting in significant downward adjustments.
The biggest revision was in March, down by 266,000 jobs. These fluctuations are unusual and could indicate issues with the BLS methodology.
With the latest revisions, the average month in '23 was overestimated by 105k jobs – BLS didn't exactly hit the white… pic.twitter.com/hr5iu6XHKv
— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) February 3, 2024
E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, said, “Revisions are a normal part of the reporting process, but large changes, or adjustments that consistently move in the same direction, are not normal.”
“Instead, they’re indicative of something problematic with the BLS’ methodology. That can happen when market conditions change drastically enough to be outside of the assumptions used in their models,” explained the researcher.
“When the economy was rapidly deteriorating at the onset of the Great Recession, the BLS repeatedly and consistently overestimated job levels, which then had to be revised down,” Antoni continued.
“The worsening economic conditions fell outside of the assumptions used by the BLS statisticians, so the estimates became inaccurate. There could be similar problems today due to fallout from the government-imposed recession in 2020 because the labor market still hasn’t recovered,” he concluded.
The job level increased by 2.34 million in 2023, with recent years showing fewer downward revisions.
Government job growth has contributed to record numbers, raising concerns about the accuracy of current estimates due to economic fallout from the 2020 recession.
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