Predestination

Tomorrow's (in a few hours) the day for the monthly labor report. It's been discussed here a few times, mostly around the reliability of the sampling. 99.44% of damn gummint macro-data is from sampling surveys, not population data. And, if the Right Wingnuts get their way, the 2020 census will be as polluted as a Superfund Site.

Anyway, a recently minted NYT reporter offers some additional thoughts. Worth your time, if you care about macro-data.

[I]t's really two reports stitched together. One, based on a survey of employers, provides information on jobs: how many were created (or eliminated) the previous month and how much those jobs pay. The other, based on a survey of households, focuses on individuals: how many are working or not working, along with information on their age, race, education and other characteristics.

For me, the second most interesting aspect (beyond the difficulty in tracking the SDs of the surveys) of the report is that it is released on the first Friday of the following month. So, BLS/Census have to crunch the numbers in a very short window for this report. As Casselman mentions, reports are subsequently updated, and short window reports being the most volatile.