----- Original Message ----- From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 6:54 PM Subject: Re: Household vs. payroll employment
> On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 01:38:59PM -0600, Dan Minette wrote: > > > > From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > > On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 09:42:48AM -0600, Dan Minette wrote: > > > > > This is an interesting question. On the face of it, your > > > > arguement is intuative, but there are other factors involved. > > > > People who work in housing, but are not "on the books" are usually > > > > (or at least often) illegal immigrants. They tend to eschew > > > > filling out government forms and surveys. > > > > I don't follow your point here. Are you saying that we shouldn't > > > count these as jobs because the people doing them are not legally in > > > the country? > > > No, I'm saying that they would probably not appear in the household > > survey because they would not fill it out. > > In that case I'll have to disagree with your first point. There are > definitely a significant number of self-employed people doing things > like contract jobs for homebuilding who will be counted in the household > survey but not in the payroll survey. Right, but there is a seperate catagory for them. The difference between payroll figures are still substantial. > http://www.bls.gov/cps/ces_cps_trends.pdf > > The household survey includes "agriculture and related employment, > NONAGRICULTURAL SELF EMPLOYED, unpaid family and private household > workers, and workers on unpaid leave from their jobs". Right, but there is a seperate catagory for them. The difference between payroll figures are still substantial, even when these jobs are taken out. <quote from previous post> To test the self-employment theory, the Fed adjusted the household survey by taking out all the kinds of workers who do not show up on the payroll survey - self-employed people, but also farm workers and family workers in family-run companies. Even then, Mr. Greenspan said, the discrepancy remains large. <end quote> There are a few logica possibilities that I can think of for the discrepency to exist. 1) There has been a great growth in workers in off the books jobs. 2) There has been a great growth in people reporting their off the books jobs. 3) There has been a great drop in second jobs, which affect the payroll figures, but not the household figures. 4) The normalization > > In short, to be very clear, I think that most "off the books" > > employment is off the radar for both the household and the payroll > > measures of unemployment. > > The B.L.S. is not as certain as you are: > > " `Off-the-books' employment -- Workers who are paid `off-the-books' > are not reported in the payroll survey. The household survey could > possibly include some of these workers, but BLS cannot determine > the extent to which they might be reflected in household survey > employment." Actually, I don't see myself in real disagreement with that. I agree that some of the "off the book workers" could be included. I realize that I cannot determine the fraction that are reported. But, I do know that it is very hard to get numbers on illegals because they do eschew government forms. There is also the logic that people getting money under the table are less likely to report it than folks who have a job they pay taxes on. But, I'll agree that these are not hard, data based arguements. I'd put a bet down that most "off the book jobs" do not appear as payroll jobs in the household reports. > On the other hand, the B.L.S. does seem to agree that a large > discrepancy between the surveys was due to population estimates. But > they have since corrected for that by revising the population growth > down (see the graph in the link above), and the household survey still > shows a slightly better job market recently than the payroll survey. I > think that difference is probably due to a booming employment market > for the self-employed, such as small-time contractors participating in > homebuilding work. But, if you look at the graph you reference, it has not been renormalized between the start and end of the period that is covered. So, as far as I can tell, it would not have corrected for the recent effect that Greenspan commented on. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
