As readers know, I have tried to track and report on the monthly employment reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which have involved repeated large revisions, usually to the downside. On an annual basis other revisions are down to these numbers. Trying to reconcile that and feel like you really understand what is happening with jobs and employment numbers in the US is very difficult. One of the underlying issues is the extremely low response rates for the data that is survey-based. This week BLS released “Business Employment Dynamics Summary” for the second quarter of 2024.
According to the report, in that quarter there were 7.6 million job gains from opening and expanding businesses while 7.8 million job losses occurred at closing and shrinking businesses. That is a net loss of 160,000 jobs (rounding accounts for the apparent difference). At the same time, the monthly BLS employment reports were showing job increases. The number of job gains were lower than in the prior quarter and the number of job losses much higher. Small firms represented almost all of the job losses. It is worth a look at the Technical Note link at the bottom of the release; that will give you a good sense of how complex the compiling and revision of some of this data is. (BLS Release)