Seasonally Adjusted Non-Farm Jobs Change 2013-Present: Comparison between Griz Method/Simple YoY and BLS Monthly Reports
Source Data: BLS
Total Nonfarm 2017-7. xlsx
I've been monitoring the inaccuracy and volatility in the monthly BLS jobs reports for several years now. It is truly amazing to see how wild and inaccurate the monthly reporting of jobs gains is. Hiring is not raging at a 222k/month pace as the most recent report claims. 184k/month is a lot closer to accurate. About the only way to get a meaningful number from the BLS monthly jobs gain reported, is to average 12 months of data, and then the number tracks pretty close to reality.
The above chart makes it pretty clear that up to about December 2014 the monthly BLS report tended to over report jobs gains. But since January 2015 it has been under reporting. This can be seen by the blue and orange bars tracking pretty close in most months up to December 2014, with the orange bars periodically spiking over the blue. But since January 2015 it the orange more typically track well below the blue. Summing the difference between the orange and blue bars proves this as well.
