Yesterday, the BLS released a little-read jobs report that shows reported jobs in 2023 may be wildly overstated. In turn, that means GDP is likely overstated as well.
BED Chart Notes
- Data is from the BLS Business Employment Dynamics (BED) report and the BLS monthly jobs reports (CES).
- BED data is less timely but far more accurate than the BLS monthly jobs reports/
- For 2023 Q3, the BED reports shows gross job gains of 7.559 million and gross job losses of 7.751 million for a net loss of 192,000 jobs.
- The BLS monthly jobs reports show a gain of 640,000 jobs.
BED Job Gains and Losses by Quarter
Summary of Major Differences
Note that BED data is based on 9.1 million establishments while the monthly jobs reports are only based on 670,000 establishments.
The monthly reports are timely but inaccurate. And the BLS annual benchmark revisions do not also revise the monthly numbers. This makes year-over-year comparisons inaccurate as well.
I created the lead chart by netting BED data and comparing the BED net jobs to net quarterly jobs from the CES data.
BED vs CES
- 2023 Q2 BED: +332,000
- 2023 Q3 BED: -192,000
- 2023 Q2 CES: +821,000
- 2023 Q3 BED: +640,000
CES Overstatement
- 2023 Q2 CES Overstatement: 489,000 Jobs
- 2023 Q3 CES Overstatement: 832,000 Jobs
- Q2+Q3 Overstatement: 1.321 Million Jobs
Thus, the BLS says that the BLS monthly job reports for 2023 Q2 and Q3 are overstated by a total of 1.321 million jobs.
Jobs Up 303,000 Full Time Employment Down 6,000 in March
In March, the economy continued to add a high percentage of government and social assistance jobs. Part time employment rose by 691,000 as full time employment fell by 6,000.
