It’s almost time to engage in our monthly ritual once again. Friday is jobs report day. We’ll get to see how many jobs were added in February, but the revisions are more important. Every month when BLS releases its report, it revises the previous reports to more accurately reflect the data. This creates an interesting indicator. If the reports are being consistently revised upwards, it suggests that the government is underestimating the extent of recovery, while consistently lower revisions suggest over-estimation. Throughout the run up to the most recent recession and the policy response during and afterwards, the government has displayed its tendency to underestimate the size of problems and overestimate the size of solutions. So a bit of recovery underestimation would be a welcome change, and its what we’ve seen with the last few reports.
In any case, this post is just meant as a quick look at where we are today, before Friday’s data release.
Total employment from 2009 on:
And the unemployment rate from 2009 on:
We still have a long way to go.
520 Chestnut 
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