The problem is that even though the Household survey tends to be very volatile, this decline seems to lack face-validity, particularly after the prior month's numbers. The consensus estimate was that the government would report that the unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.1% in September. GDP growth was 1.3% in the second quarter and seems to be no better this quarter. The government's Establishment survey shows there were 114,000 new jobs created in September –– very close to the consensus of 113,000 –– and not sufficient to lower the unemployment rate.

The obvious conclusion is that a new employment measure is needed. Gallup has proposed such a measure –– Payroll to Population (P2P) –– the number of Americans employed full-time for an employer as a percentage of the U.S. population. This is a much simpler measure that has none of the numerous adjustments made to the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate. The P2P deteriorated slightly to 45.1% in September from 45.3% in August, suggesting the real jobs situation was essentially unchanged last month.

Adults who are self-employed, working part time, unemployed, or out of the workforce are not counted as payroll-employed in the P2P metric.

Quoted:
I think the BLS statistics are probably impeccably accurate.

Does someone know something that I don't?

Quoted:
I think the BLS statistics are probably impeccably accurate.

Does someone know something that I don't?