Public and Private Labor Market Data: Insights From the Government Shutdown

Claudia Macaluso

Richmond Fed Economic Brief, 2026, vol. 26, issue 04

Abstract: Private and public data are complements, not substitutes: Private sources offer speed and granularity, while government surveys provide representative benchmarks. Different data sources can measure similar but subtlety different things. For instance, JOLTS, ADP, RPLS and Gusto all measure "employment" but define it in different ways. These differences can lead to very different measurements, illustrated by two private data sources diverging by 100,000 jobs during the shutdown.

Keywords: Employment; and; labor; markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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