Federal Officials Rebench Monthly Jobs Figures Each Year to Match Payroll Records. Each month, federal officials survey businesses in the state about their current payroll. These surveys are used to estimate how the total number of jobs in each state changes from month to month. Each March, federal officials correct (or "revise") the monthly survey estimates to match actual payroll records collected from businesses each year. In most years, the annual correction is small and does not does materially affect our interpretation of the state's labor markets. One important exception is that revisions tend to be more meaningful during economic downturns, with monthly survey estimates often overstating the number of jobs.
Recent Rebenching Shows State Added Far Fewer Jobs Than Originally Thought. The figure below compares the preliminary, monthly estimates of job growth between September 2023 and September 2024 to reviseed actual job growth as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this week. The corrected data show that the state added just 60,000 jobs between September 2023 and September 2024. The monthly jobs report, which the administration and the Legisture relied on to gauge the economy during that period, showed the labor market growing steadily, appearing to add more than 250,000 jobs over that period. (Actual job growth for the year was 0.3 percent, compared to the 1.5 percent growth initial reported via the preliminary survey.)