Revisions to US labor market data and the public’s perception of the economy

Salem Abo-Zaid

Economics Letters, 2014, vol. 122, issue 2, 119-124

Abstract: Using the monthly “Employment Situation” reports for 1994–2013, this paper studies the revisions to US employment data. The paper shows that the first press release underestimates net job creation in expansions and overestimates it in downturns. The “errors” in reporting the data on the labor market can distort the public’s perception about the stance of the labor market and have some political consequences. This is well reflected by the finding that the job approval rating of President Obama, the index of consumer confidence, and the economic conditions index of Gallup have all been responding to the initial news on the US labor market as they were published in the Employment Situation reports.

Keywords: US net job creation; US unemployment rate; Employment Situation report; Revisions to employment data; Public’s perception (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C82 E24 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176513005004
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:122:y:2014:i:2:p:119-124

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2013.11.013

Access Statistics for this article

Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office

More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().