The number of people who think that (a) it's easy to get accurate data in a timely fashion and (b) if there are revisions it must be "mistakes" or "faking data" is really worrisome. Let me explain. 🧵
https://twitter.com/BetseyStevenson/status/1951424903535796712
The jobs numbers for July reflect all the people on a companies payroll in the week that includes the 12th of the month. Companies need to send that information to the BLS. Many are delayed in sending it in, either because they are busy or because their pay period that includes that week goes late into the month (for example companies that pay employees monthly).
The BLS also needs a representative survey of companies and every day new companies are formed and existing companies shut down. When a company doens't respond on time is it becuase they are busy or because they shut down?
Should the data be held until all companies in the survey respond? That would mean releasing May data now, in August. It would be more accurate (as the latest revision is more accurate), but it would mean waiting months for the data.
Another issue is new companies forming. It's hard to find companies that just opened, but assuming none opened is wrong. Should the data be held until an accurate measure of company births can be gathered? To be completely accurate we might want to wait until the UI tax data is released a year later.
Finally, we want seasonally adjusted data so we aren't just seeing slumps and surges due to normal seasonal patterns. The problem is that "normal seasonal" changes and got particularly shook up with Covid. That might mean only releasing annual data to avoid seasonal patterns or waiting a few years until the seasonal pattern is exactly known.
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