The White House is trying to prepare Americans for a 'strange' jobs report

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Yahoo Finance

The White House is trying to prepare Americans for a 'strange' jobs report

Ben Werschkul · Senior Producer and Writer
Tue, February 1, 2022, 4:27 PM

Ahead of Friday's jobs report, the White House is lowering expectations about a number they say could be hard hit by both the Omicron variant and a quirk of how the data is gathered each month. ... "We just wanted to prepare people to understand...what it is an assessment of and as a result, the month’s jobs report may show job losses in large part because workers were out sick from Omicron," Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

Experts have warned of less than stellar news for weeks. On Jan. 20, Moody’s Analytics' Adam Kamins joined Yahoo Finance and noted that some strong 2021 jobs numbers "don't reflect Omicron yet.” The variant could be a setback for jobs in January and February, he added.

The White House is concerned that Friday’s report could be especially eye-popping because of how the jobs data is gathered. The “January” number being released on Friday is actually the result of a survey taken for a week around Jan. 12 — instead of an accounting of the entire month. ... The reported COVID cases fueled by the Omicron variant peaked nationally right around then.

{snip}

To make things even more complicated for the White House, if workers are out sick and don't receive a paycheck for the week in question, they're counted as having lost their job — even if they returned the following week. ... The Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey has already found 9 million people who reported being out of work in that timeframe either because they had COVID-19 or were caring for somebody who did. That compares to around 3 million people just two weeks prior.

Link to tweet

{snip}

[SoCalDavidS]

1. Get Ready For A Full Weekend Of Biden Bashing nt

[progree]

2. There are two surveys, the payroll jobs survey and the household survey

They are apparently describing the payroll jobs survey, the one that bellows out each month "ANOTHER 250,000 jobs added in January" or whatever. (OK, the headline never says ANOTHER, it's only when people file for unemployment benefits that they use "another", as in "ANOTHER 280,000 filed for jobless benefits last week" (dig dig :rofl

In the article, there is a tweet by Jared Bernstein:

Jared Bernstein tweet: If you're not at work because you're sick or caring for someone who's sick, and you're not getting paid, you're not counted as employed in the BLS payroll survey, even if you still have your job.

It's a payroll survey, so if you're not on the payroll, you don't get counted. Household survey is different, but its employment counts are less frequently cited relative to payrolls--smaller sample, noisier.

There is another survey, called the HOUSEHOLD SURVEY that produces the unemployment rate, Labor Force Participation Rate, number of Employed (which is usually ignored by media and analysts due to small sample size and a lot of noise). The article doesn't describe how that will be affected. It is my understanding that -- similarly to the payroll survey -- it is usually conducted over a week that includes the 12th of the month, so that will be the week that includes Wednesday Jan 12, about when the Omicron new case rate peaked nationally.

Anyhoo, I'm speculating what this will do to the unemployment rate, which is the other big number the media highlights in their headlines (BLS too).

If they are not employed according to this questionnaire / Household Survey criteria, that doesn't mean they are automatically unemployed. Rather, to be counted as unemployed, one must also have looked for work in the past 4 weeks. Presumably, someone out sick would not be looking for other work, so a large number of these folks wouldn't jack up the unemployment rate.

So we might have a jobs report that says 200,000 or 400,000 jobs LOST and yet a very small rise or even reduction in the unemployment rate

a number of analysts expect a loss, perhaps even as high as 200,000-400,000 jobs in January.

[progree]

3. Companies unexpectedly cut 301,000 jobs in January as omicron slams jobs market, ADP says

compared to a positive 200,000 expected. And compared to +776,000 gain in December.

LBN link ( mahatmakanejeeves ) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142862790

So the strange jobs report is beginning to unfold -- the BLS numbers come out Friday.