alt Hacker NewsThat's all well and good in theory, but job reports data over recent years have noticeably shifted towards downward monthly revisions. Prior to the pandemic response, the graph [1] looks much more balanced with regards to positive and negative decisions.
[1] https://www.apmresearchlab.org/blog/how-abnormal-are-the-rev...
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jeffbee • today at 12:02 AM
Sure, but it's totally ridiculous to post about that without discussing the survey response rate, which is the cause of that drift. People are attributing it to political meddling, and that is baseless.
Naturally all of this metadata about the BLS surveys is available for free from the BLS, so you can just go look at it.
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> but job reports data over recent years have noticeably shifted towards downward monthly revisions. Prior to the pandemic response, the graph [1] looks much more balanced with regards to positive and negative decisions
Yes. The reasons for this are well documented. Changing methodology for the preview estimates is rigorous. That means our published estimates lag best estimates, something the primary sources note in every release if one gets past the headlines.
Also, if you have one year of massive job gains and four years of flat and falling, you’ll spend most of your epoch biased one way. Again, not a sign of methodological problems. Just a predictable methodological artifact that folks are supposed to be able to incorporate before using, much less emotionally reacting to, the data.