On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 08:14:04PM -0600, Dan Minette wrote: > Right, but there is a seperate catagory for them.
I don't see your point. The categories are not well-defined, so they cannot be fully reconciled between the two surveys. > The difference between payroll figures are still substantial. Yes, that is rather the point, don't you think? If they weren't different, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. The important question is which is a better representation of the employment situation? > 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 B.L.S. lists several possibilities for the differences in the article I referenced: - sampling error - payroll survey benchmark - new business births in the payroll survey - population controls in the household survey - worker classification in the household survey - "off-the-books" employment > 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. What do you think they mean by "smoothed for population control revisions"? -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
