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In reply to the discussion: Labor Department won't release Friday's key jobs report, other data, in case of a shutdown [View all]progree
(12,381 posts)but yes, the linked-to "summary", always https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm , goes on and on.
And it's annoying as hell when they keep using the words, "changed little" over and over again and again
Yes, I also look at the main table for both the Establishment Survey (err, REPORT), and the Household Survey (err, REPORT) because at a glance it tells me what the important but non-headline numbers like Labor Force, Labor Force Participation Rate, Employment, employment population ratio, civilian non-institutional population and a couple other things did as far as changes over the last month.
Also, I page down to the bottom of the summary where they have the Revisions. As you know, I consider the revisions to the previous 2 months' payroll jobs numbers to be just as important as the latest month's headline number. E.g. in the August report, the headline [non-farm payroll] jobs number gain was +22,000. The previous two months were revised down by a combined 21,000, and thus the total number of jobs was only 1,000 more than were reported the previous month. To me, the +1,000 is the key takeaway number on job growth.
I also like to average the last 3 months' growth numbers and last 12 months' growth number. In the August report, I also found the 4 month average interesting:
3 months: 29k/mo
4 months: 27k/mo
12 months: 122k/mo
For the deep-dive nerds, these don't include the 911k downward revision of the April 2024 thru March 2025 period, as that is a preliminary report (the BLS data series doesn't show them either) https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001
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