I was sitting at home, thinking my liberal thoughts. Then I turned on my T.V. and flipped around until I was lured in by this Fox network. I tried to fight, but my mind went blank and then in my blankness they started making sense. So now the only time my mind is at peace is when I agree with Fox.
A couple of years ago C-span did a program that illuminated the basic contrast between the left and the right. On one side was Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and the other was Ronald Regans speeches. The points of view were from Townsend, that I am my brothers keeper and from Regan that its every man for himself. This basic difference in what I would using a term from geometry would call postulates defines all the other differences. If its every man for himself, then the smallest government is best, while the alternative tends towards a European Social Democracy. Interestingly one can see these threads somewhat in the Jefferson versus Hamilton debates in the Washington Admin, so clearly these are long run issues, and if these two bright people could not reach a conclusion, then far be it from us to be able to. Of course most religious traditions would come down on the my brothers keeper side (Townsend explicitly said so in her case). I suppose it would be interesting to see how much rugged individualism really worked in the settlement of the country. I recall stories about barn raisings and so forth as community affairs. Wagon Trains to the west were community affairs as well.
How many of you actually compared the latest DOL non-adjusted and seasonally adjusted employment and unemployment data? And how many news articles and television reports did you read that cited any of the non-adjusted figures?
How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010? Or believe that retail employment rose by 42,000 in Jan 2010? How many believe that the U.S. only lost 20,000 net jobs in Jan 2010? It’s all BS, particularly when the DOL news release doesn’t explain that most of their cited figures are seasonally adjusted.
If you didn’t look at it, here is a good place to start.
How many of you actually compared the latest DOL non-adjusted and seasonally adjusted employment and unemployment data? And how many news articles and television reports did you read that cited any of the non-adjusted figures?
How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010? Or believe that retail employment rose by 42,000 in Jan 2010? How many believe that the U.S. only lost 20,000 net jobs in Jan 2010? It’s all BS, particularly when the DOL news release doesn’t explain that most of their cited figures are seasonally adjusted.
If you didn’t look at it, here is a good place to start.
How many of you actually compared the latest DOL non-adjusted and seasonally adjusted employment and unemployment data? And how many news articles and television reports did you read that cited any of the non-adjusted figures?
How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010? Or believe that retail employment rose by 42,000 in Jan 2010? How many believe that the U.S. only lost 20,000 net jobs in Jan 2010? It’s all BS, particularly when the DOL news release doesn’t explain that most of their cited figures are seasonally adjusted.
If you didn’t look at it, here is a good place to start.
You’re right that the seasonally adjusted stuff is wrong, but you’re probably wrong in thinking that the non-seasonally adjusted numbers are better. Reality seems to be that every year there is a bunch of hiring in October-December for the Christmas holidays. And every January, most of those folks get laid off.
So we correct the data to try to remove the seasonal stuff and see the underlying trends.
… Except this year and last, Christmas retailling was weak to awful as was the hiring. Which means that the seasonal adjustments based on Christmas past assumed more seasonal hiring than took place and made October-Novermber-December look worse than they actually were. Now in January, we have assumed the de-hiring of the folks who weren’t actually ever hired and the adjustments almost certainly make things look more optimistic than they should.
This isn’t rocket science (and a lot of rocket science isn’t actually that complicated). But it seems beyond the comprehension of the MSM and also of many people who I would think really ought to know better,
Anyway, the Feb numbers should be less hosed, and I’m guessing that March should give a fairly accurate picture of where we really are. … maybe
***I suppose it would be interesting to see how much rugged individualism really worked in the settlement of the country. I recall stories about barn raisings and so forth as community affairs. Wagon Trains to the west were community affairs as well.*** Lyle
It worked pretty well if one avoided overly potent mixtures of ethyl alcohol and firearms. There’s a reason the cow towns hired marshalls.
BTW, Vermont — which most people regard as being over the top liberal — is largely run — as it always has been — by public meetings and volunteer town officials. Regretably, perhaps, I don’t think you could run bigger places like Los Angeles, Miami, Illinois, or New York that way.
I guess I don’t understand your objection to using seasonally adjusted data. That’s the right way to do things. The BLS uses the Census Bureau’s X-12 ARIMA model for seasonally adjusting data. Here’s a description: http://www.bls.gov/cps/eetech_seas.pdf X-12 ARIMA is in the public domain, you can download it and just about every piece of time series software out there has X-12 ARIMA as an option. Aside from all of the usual “differencing” and “lagging” stuff that every ARIMA model does to make the data stationary, the X-12 part also accounts for things that we don’t always think about. For example, economic data is particularly sensitive to the fact that holidays fall on different days of the week and consequently have different employment effects; December doesn’t always have the same number of weekend days, etc. That’s all part of the pre-adjustment stuff done in X-12. And the post-adjustment stuff in X-12 has all of the diagnostics used to judge which ARIMA specification is best according to various weights that BLS assigns to all of the test diagnostics for autocorrelation, unit roots, outlier amplitudes, etc.
There is a difference between correcting for a lot of things and making proper corrections. IMO, the underlying problem is there is simply no way to know how many people were hired for seasonal jobs in this recession period and how many were laid off after the holidays. I don’t think that you can fix flawed major adjustments by tweaking for minor unrelated factors. Try that with a physical system, and you would be well advised to use blast shields and wear a safety helmet.
…there is simply no way to know how many people were hired for seasonal jobs in this recession period and how many were laid off after the holidays.
Well, you could ask them in the household survey questionaire.
Aren’t you conflating seasonal adjustments and cyclical adjustments? We do know that stuff like the timing of Thanksgiving and the number of Saturday’s in December all contribute to seasonality effects in the data. It just makes sense to correct for those known effects. The effects of the recession are cyclical rather than seasonal.
In the physical sciences you always have the option of not doing the experiment if you’re not comfortable with the parameter estimates. That’s not the case in the social sciences. The experiment is already done; but you do get chances to revisit and revise the data at a later date. I guess the real question isn’t whether the point estimate of 9.7% is on target, it’s whether or not there is any unintentional bias in that estimate. I don’t see how seasonality adjustments make the BLS numbers a biased estimate.
MG: It isn’t hard to determine that the Postal Service headcounts at least pass the laugh test and in fact are quite consistent with other available data. The most recent payroll data filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission (from pay periods in November and December) indicates that USPS is paying about 665-670K employees per pay period and has around 690K on-rolls.
The BLS data agree with the USPS’s statistics as to a substantial year-over-year drop in USPS employment, but even against that backdrop the paid headcount in pay period 26 (Dec.) was around 3,500 higher than in pay period 24 (Nov.). (Indeed, if anything, the preliminary December postal payroll data look a bit light, but then again they are labeled as preliminary.) So variations of a few thousand jobs in the unadjusted data are not at all out of the question.
On the SA front, there isn’t much mystery either. USPS’s seasonal casual hiring was down sharply year-over-year for fairly obvious reasons, so in all likelihood the seasonal casual firing is down, too. (January statistics aren’t public yet, so that’s an educated guess.) Hence the SA process doesn’t see the job losses it expects and viola, you get a SA increase in employment.
***Aren’t you conflating seasonal adjustments and cyclical adjustments?***
No, I’m merely pointing out that getting the cyclical adjustment right, doesn’t correct for using almost certainly incorrect numbers in the seasonal adjustment. We don’t actually know what numbers to use in the seasonal adjustment this Winter. Adjusting for windage isn’t going to improve your shooting much if the sights are grossly misaligned.
Probably what we ought to do is estimate error bounds and publish the error estimate along with the computed value. But estimating error bounds properly is very hard because of the need to estimate the size of biases. Besides which, very few people really care about reality. What they want is fantasy that matches their preconceptions.
I asked a simple question regarding U.S. Postal Service employment: “How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010?”
The latest BLS is, in fact, inconsistent with other available data. There is not one year since 1939 in which the December employment of the U.S. Postal Service was lower than the subsequent January employment. The historical tables provide the evidence.
I asked a simple question regarding U.S. Postal Service employment: “How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010?”
What would be the basis for believing that the U.S. Postal Service increased employment in January 2010 on the order of 14,000 or 14,300 employment, the latter figure being the BLS seasonally adjusted data? If one believes the BLS non adjusted figures, then the U.S. Postal Service increased employment from 667,500 in December to 684,600 in January, an increase of 17,100. Again, this is pure nonsense.
The latest BLS data is, in fact, inconsistent with other available data. There is not one year since 1939 in which the December employment of the U.S. Postal Service was lower than the subsequent January employment. The historical tables provide the evidence.
I asked a simple question regarding U.S. Postal Service employment: “How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010?”
What would be the basis for believing that the U.S. Postal Service increased employment in January 2010 on the order of 14,000 or 14,300 employment, the latter figure being the BLS seasonally adjusted data? If one believes the BLS non adjusted figures, then the U.S. Postal Service increased employment from 667,500 in December to 684,600 in January, an increase of 17,100. Again, this is pure nonsense based on the seasonal hiring patterns employed by the U.S. Postal Service.
The latest BLS data is, in fact, inconsistent with other available data. There is not one year since 1939 in which the December employment of the U.S. Postal Service was lower than the subsequent January employment. The historical tables provide the evidence.
MG — I agree that the numbers don’t look right, but if I just looked at the series without knowing any context, my guess would be that the December number should have been bigger than November — 687.5 or 697.5 rather than 667.5
What seems more striking is the unusually low number for December, not the January number. First, the fairly steady drop in Post Office employment is consistent with the Post Office’s earlier announcement to shed jobs…lots of jobs, mostly through retirements.
And don’t forget that due to certain peculiarities in the government’s compensation rules, a lot of folks choose to retire in December…especially if there is a retirement bonus. That kind of thing could result in an unusually low December figure.
But clearly things have changed because the Post Office is now on a hiring binge. So if the government is actively hiring people for Post Office jobs, then I would expect employment numbers to go up, wouldn’t you? If you’re interested in a new carerr opportunity, see here:
So what could explain all this? Well, we are in a recession and I can’t imagine that a President would not want to do the one thing over which he has a fair amount of control, and that’s pumping up government employment. But the postal business is itself highly susceptible to the business cycle, and given that the recession probably bottomed out about 6 months ago, it makes sense to begin hiring. There are other reasons. For example, DHL is no longer a player, so that puts added burden on the Post Office. And even UPS is going through some restructuring. A month ago they announced job cuts of 1800:
And the other day I heard something on the radio about UPS possibly laying off another 6000. I think it’s fair to assume that the Post Office probably had some advance knowledge.
I agree that the retirements would have had an impact, whether reflected in the December or January data. Or both. If the number of retirements exceeded the level anticipated, the number of replacement hires might show up as a bubble internally though net employment should be down.
That doesn’t fully explain why the normal December employment gain at some level didn’t occur; those are temp gains. Moreover, the January number indicates that the U.S. Postal Service probably hasn’t hit its planned reduction targets announced earlier in 2009. I would have expected the Jan employment to be lower than Nov employment.
The question I have is whether the employment hires include postal route contractors. I wouldn’t think so.
I was sitting at home, thinking my liberal thoughts. Then I turned on my T.V. and flipped around until I was lured in by this Fox network. I tried to fight, but my mind went blank and then in my blankness they started making sense. So now the only time my mind is at peace is when I agree with Fox.
A couple of years ago C-span did a program that illuminated the basic contrast between the left and the right. On one side was Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and the other was Ronald Regans speeches. The points of view were from Townsend, that I am my brothers keeper and from Regan that its every man for himself. This basic difference in what I would using a term from geometry would call postulates defines all the other differences. If its every man for himself, then the smallest government is best, while the alternative tends towards a European Social Democracy. Interestingly one can see these threads somewhat in the Jefferson versus Hamilton debates in the Washington Admin, so clearly these are long run issues, and if these two bright people could not reach a conclusion, then far be it from us to be able to.
Of course most religious traditions would come down on the my brothers keeper side (Townsend explicitly said so in her case).
I suppose it would be interesting to see how much rugged individualism really worked in the settlement of the country. I recall stories about barn raisings and so forth as community affairs. Wagon Trains to the west were community affairs as well.
Good Grief! The Republicans just bankrupted the country. All the blah, blah, bullshit in the world shouln’t cancel that one out, should it ?
Oh yes it can.
How many of you actually compared the latest DOL non-adjusted and seasonally adjusted employment and unemployment data? And how many news articles and television reports did you read that cited any of the non-adjusted figures?
How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010? Or believe that retail employment rose by 42,000 in Jan 2010? How many believe that the U.S. only lost 20,000 net jobs in Jan 2010? It’s all BS, particularly when the DOL news release doesn’t explain that most of their cited figures are seasonally adjusted.
If you didn’t look at it, here is a good place to start.
Employment Situation Summary — JANUARY 2010
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Table B-1.Employees on nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm
How many of you actually compared the latest DOL non-adjusted and seasonally adjusted employment and unemployment data? And how many news articles and television reports did you read that cited any of the non-adjusted figures?
How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010? Or believe that retail employment rose by 42,000 in Jan 2010? How many believe that the U.S. only lost 20,000 net jobs in Jan 2010? It’s all BS, particularly when the DOL news release doesn’t explain that most of their cited figures are seasonally adjusted.
If you didn’t look at it, here is a good place to start.
Employment Situation Summary — JANUARY 2010
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Table B-1.Employees on nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm
How many of you actually compared the latest DOL non-adjusted and seasonally adjusted employment and unemployment data? And how many news articles and television reports did you read that cited any of the non-adjusted figures?
How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010? Or believe that retail employment rose by 42,000 in Jan 2010? How many believe that the U.S. only lost 20,000 net jobs in Jan 2010? It’s all BS, particularly when the DOL news release doesn’t explain that most of their cited figures are seasonally adjusted.
If you didn’t look at it, here is a good place to start.
Employment Situation Summary — JANUARY 2010
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Table B-1.Employees on nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm
***It’s all BS*** MG
You’re right that the seasonally adjusted stuff is wrong, but you’re probably wrong in thinking that the non-seasonally adjusted numbers are better. Reality seems to be that every year there is a bunch of hiring in October-December for the Christmas holidays. And every January, most of those folks get laid off.
So we correct the data to try to remove the seasonal stuff and see the underlying trends.
… Except this year and last, Christmas retailling was weak to awful as was the hiring. Which means that the seasonal adjustments based on Christmas past assumed more seasonal hiring than took place and made October-Novermber-December look worse than they actually were. Now in January, we have assumed the de-hiring of the folks who weren’t actually ever hired and the adjustments almost certainly make things look more optimistic than they should.
This isn’t rocket science (and a lot of rocket science isn’t actually that complicated). But it seems beyond the comprehension of the MSM and also of many people who I would think really ought to know better,
Anyway, the Feb numbers should be less hosed, and I’m guessing that March should give a fairly accurate picture of where we really are. … maybe
***I suppose it would be interesting to see how much rugged individualism really worked in the settlement of the country. I recall stories about barn raisings and so forth as community affairs. Wagon Trains to the west were community affairs as well.*** Lyle
It worked pretty well if one avoided overly potent mixtures of ethyl alcohol and firearms. There’s a reason the cow towns hired marshalls.
BTW, Vermont — which most people regard as being over the top liberal — is largely run — as it always has been — by public meetings and volunteer town officials. Regretably, perhaps, I don’t think you could run bigger places like Los Angeles, Miami, Illinois, or New York that way.
I would love to read more about this topic.
http://www.forexqs.blogspot.com
Cantab,
You mean Megan Fox, right?
MG,
I guess I don’t understand your objection to using seasonally adjusted data. That’s the right way to do things. The BLS uses the Census Bureau’s X-12 ARIMA model for seasonally adjusting data. Here’s a description:
http://www.bls.gov/cps/eetech_seas.pdf
X-12 ARIMA is in the public domain, you can download it and just about every piece of time series software out there has X-12 ARIMA as an option. Aside from all of the usual “differencing” and “lagging” stuff that every ARIMA model does to make the data stationary, the X-12 part also accounts for things that we don’t always think about. For example, economic data is particularly sensitive to the fact that holidays fall on different days of the week and consequently have different employment effects; December doesn’t always have the same number of weekend days, etc. That’s all part of the pre-adjustment stuff done in X-12. And the post-adjustment stuff in X-12 has all of the diagnostics used to judge which ARIMA specification is best according to various weights that BLS assigns to all of the test diagnostics for autocorrelation, unit roots, outlier amplitudes, etc.
There is a difference between correcting for a lot of things and making proper corrections. IMO, the underlying problem is there is simply no way to know how many people were hired for seasonal jobs in this recession period and how many were laid off after the holidays. I don’t think that you can fix flawed major adjustments by tweaking for minor unrelated factors. Try that with a physical system, and you would be well advised to use blast shields and wear a safety helmet.
VtCodger,
…there is simply no way to know how many people were hired for seasonal jobs in this recession period and how many were laid off after the holidays.
Well, you could ask them in the household survey questionaire.
Aren’t you conflating seasonal adjustments and cyclical adjustments? We do know that stuff like the timing of Thanksgiving and the number of Saturday’s in December all contribute to seasonality effects in the data. It just makes sense to correct for those known effects. The effects of the recession are cyclical rather than seasonal.
In the physical sciences you always have the option of not doing the experiment if you’re not comfortable with the parameter estimates. That’s not the case in the social sciences. The experiment is already done; but you do get chances to revisit and revise the data at a later date. I guess the real question isn’t whether the point estimate of 9.7% is on target, it’s whether or not there is any unintentional bias in that estimate. I don’t see how seasonality adjustments make the BLS numbers a biased estimate.
MG: It isn’t hard to determine that the Postal Service headcounts at least pass the laugh test and in fact are quite consistent with other available data. The most recent payroll data filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission (from pay periods in November and December) indicates that USPS is paying about 665-670K employees per pay period and has around 690K on-rolls.
The BLS data agree with the USPS’s statistics as to a substantial year-over-year drop in USPS employment, but even against that backdrop the paid headcount in pay period 26 (Dec.) was around 3,500 higher than in pay period 24 (Nov.). (Indeed, if anything, the preliminary December postal payroll data look a bit light, but then again they are labeled as preliminary.) So variations of a few thousand jobs in the unadjusted data are not at all out of the question.
On the SA front, there isn’t much mystery either. USPS’s seasonal casual hiring was down sharply year-over-year for fairly obvious reasons, so in all likelihood the seasonal casual firing is down, too. (January statistics aren’t public yet, so that’s an educated guess.) Hence the SA process doesn’t see the job losses it expects and viola, you get a SA increase in employment.
***Aren’t you conflating seasonal adjustments and cyclical adjustments?***
No, I’m merely pointing out that getting the cyclical adjustment right, doesn’t correct for using almost certainly incorrect numbers in the seasonal adjustment. We don’t actually know what numbers to use in the seasonal adjustment this Winter. Adjusting for windage isn’t going to improve your shooting much if the sights are grossly misaligned.
Probably what we ought to do is estimate error bounds and publish the error estimate along with the computed value. But estimating error bounds properly is very hard because of the need to estimate the size of biases. Besides which, very few people really care about reality. What they want is fantasy that matches their preconceptions.
Tom,
I disagree for obvious reasons.
I asked a simple question regarding U.S. Postal Service employment: “How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010?”
The latest BLS is, in fact, inconsistent with other available data. There is not one year since 1939 in which the December employment of the U.S. Postal Service was lower than the subsequent January employment. The historical tables provide the evidence.
Access to historical data for the “B” tables
of the Employment Situation News Release
http://www.bls.gov/ces/cesbtabs.htm
Data Retrieval: Employment, Hours, and Earnings (CES)
http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm
Series Id: CEU9091912001 Not Seasonally Adjusted
Super Sector: GovernmentIndustry: U.S. Postal Service
Data Type: ALL EMPLOYEES, THOUSANDS
Year.Jan…Feb…Mar…Apr…May…Jun…Jul…Aug…Sep…Oct…Nov…Dec
2000 881.6 877.7 878.3 881.6 875.0 873.6 872.3 881.2 871.2 871.8 880.9 911.7
2001 879.6 878.0 874.6 875.4 872.6 871.5 868.7 866.6 869.1 863.4 865.7 891.2
2002 860.7 854.8 851.1 847.2 860.8 852.6 833.1 830.0 828.6 824.3 823.2 842.5
2003 820.4 815.9 813.1 813.0 810.7 808.6 805.7 803.3 800.6 799.6 796.6 816.2
2004 790.6 787.7 785.1 782.6 780.6 778.6 779.4 777.7 777.2 777.4 779.5 788.8
2005 773.7 771.3 770.4 770.0 772.9 773.6 773.4 773.3 773.7 773.9 778.0 786.7
2006 769.4 768.0 767.7 766.5 766.5 768.1 774.7 766.0 767.1 768.1 770.7 783.3
2007 763.1 761.1 760.6 762.6 766.2 765.8 766.6 768.9 770.9 770.6 777.4 795.5
2008 753.8 754.6 755.6 757.2 752.4 747.0 754.1 740.8 738.7 744.7 733.2 737.0
2009 736.3 721.8 717.5 723.0 705.0 700.7 711.8 690.4 687.6 695.5 680.9 667.5(P)
2010 684.6(P)
P : preliminary
Year..Jan….Feb….Mar….Apr….May….Jun….Jul….Aug….Sep….Oct….Nov….Dec
2000 881.6 877.7 878.3 881.6 875.0 873.6 872.3 881.2 871.2 871.8 880.9 911.7
Year..Jan….Feb….Mar…Apr….May….Jun….Jul…..Aug….Sep….Oct….Nov….Dec
2000 881.6 877.7 878.3 881.6 875.0 873.6 872.3 881.2 871.2 871.8 880.9 911.7
Year..Jan….Feb….Mar…Apr….May…Jun….Jul…..Aug….Sep….Oct….Nov….Dec
2000 881.6 877.7 878.3 881.6 875.0 873.6 872.3 881.2 871.2 871.8 880.9 911.7
Year..Jan….Feb….Mar…Apr….May…Jun….Jul……Aug…Sep….Oct….Nov….Dec
2000 881.6 877.7 878.3 881.6 875.0 873.6 872.3 881.2 871.2 871.8 880.9 911.7
Year..Jan….Feb….Mar…Apr….May….Jun….Jul…..Aug…Sep….Oct….Nov….Dec
2000 881.6 877.7 878.3 881.6 875.0 873.6 872.3 881.2 871.2 871.8 880.9 911.7
Tom,
I asked a simple question regarding U.S. Postal Service employment: “How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010?”
What would be the basis for believing that the U.S. Postal Service increased employment in January 2010 on the order of 14,000 or 14,300 employment, the latter figure being the BLS seasonally adjusted data? If one believes the BLS non adjusted figures, then the U.S. Postal Service increased employment from 667,500 in December to 684,600 in January, an increase of 17,100. Again, this is pure nonsense.
The latest BLS data is, in fact, inconsistent with other available data. There is not one year since 1939 in which the December employment of the U.S. Postal Service was lower than the subsequent January employment. The historical tables provide the evidence.
Access to historical data for the “B” tables
of the Employment Situation News Release
http://www.bls.gov/ces/cesbtabs.htm
Data Retrieval: Employment, Hours, and Earnings (CES)
http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm
Series Id: CEU9091912001 Not Seasonally Adjusted
Super Sector: GovernmentIndustry: U.S. Postal Service
Data Type: ALL EMPLOYEES, THOUSANDS
Year..Jan….Feb….Mar…Apr….May….Jun….Jul…..Aug…Sep….Oct….Nov….Dec
2000 881.6 877.7 878.3 881.6 875.0 873.6 872.3 881.2 871.2 871.8 880.9 911.7
2001 879.6 878.0 874.6 875.4 872.6 871.5 868.7 866.6 869.1 863.4 865.7 891.2
2002 860.7 854.8 851.1 847.2 860.8 852.6 833.1 830.0 828.6 824.3 823.2 842.5
2003 820.4 815.9 813.1 813.0 810.7 808.6 805.7 803.3 800.6 799.6 796.6 816.2
2004 790.6 787.7 785.1 782.6 780.6 778.6 779.4 777.7 777.2 777.4 779.5 788.8
2005 773.7 771.3 770.4 770.0 772.9 773.6 773.4 773.3 773.7 773.9 778.0 786.7
2006 769.4 768.0 767.7 766.5 766.5 768.1 774.7 766.0 767.1 768.1 770.7 783.3
2007 763.1 761.1 760.6 762.6 766.2 765.8 766.6 768.9 770.9 770.6 777.4 795.5
2008 753.8 754.6 755.6 757.2 752.4 747.0 754.1 740.8 738.7 744.7 733.2 737.0
2009 736.3 721.8 717.5 723.0 705.0 700.7 711.8 690.4 687.6 695.5 680.9 667.5(P)
2010 684.6(P)
P : preliminary
Tom,
I asked a simple question regarding U.S. Postal Service employment: “How many of you believe that the U.S. Postal Service hired 14,000 new workers in Jan 2010?”
What would be the basis for believing that the U.S. Postal Service increased employment in January 2010 on the order of 14,000 or 14,300 employment, the latter figure being the BLS seasonally adjusted data? If one believes the BLS non adjusted figures, then the U.S. Postal Service increased employment from 667,500 in December to 684,600 in January, an increase of 17,100. Again, this is pure nonsense based on the seasonal hiring patterns employed by the U.S. Postal Service.
The latest BLS data is, in fact, inconsistent with other available data. There is not one year since 1939 in which the December employment of the U.S. Postal Service was lower than the subsequent January employment. The historical tables provide the evidence.
Access to historical data for the “B” tables
of the Employment Situation News Release
http://www.bls.gov/ces/cesbtabs.htm
Data Retrieval: Employment, Hours, and Earnings (CES)
http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm
Series Id: CEU9091912001 Not Seasonally Adjusted
Super Sector: Government Industry: U.S. Postal Service
Data Type: ALL EMPLOYEES, THOUSANDS
Year..Jan….Feb….Mar…Apr….May….Jun….Jul…..Aug…Sep….Oct….Nov….Dec
2000 881.6 877.7 878.3 881.6 875.0 873.6 872.3 881.2 871.2 871.8 880.9 911.7
2001 879.6 878.0 874.6 875.4 872.6 871.5 868.7 866.6 869.1 863.4 865.7 891.2
2002 860.7 854.8 851.1 847.2 860.8 852.6 833.1 830.0 828.6 824.3 823.2 842.5
2003 820.4 815.9 813.1 813.0 810.7 808.6 805.7 803.3 800.6 799.6 796.6 816.2
2004 790.6 787.7 785.1 782.6 780.6 778.6 779.4 777.7 777.2 777.4 779.5 788.8
2005 773.7 771.3 770.4 770.0 772.9 773.6 773.4 773.3 773.7 773.9 778.0 786.7
2006 769.4 768.0 767.7 766.5 766.5 768.1 774.7 766.0 767.1 768.1 770.7 783.3
2007 763.1 761.1 760.6 762.6 766.2 765.8 766.6 768.9 770.9 770.6 777.4 795.5
2008 753.8 754.6 755.6 757.2 752.4 747.0 754.1 740.8 738.7 744.7 733.2 737.0
2009 736.3 721.8 717.5 723.0 705.0 700.7 711.8 690.4 687.6 695.5 680.9 667.5(P)
2010 684.6(P)
P : preliminary
MG — I agree that the numbers don’t look right, but if I just looked at the series without knowing any context, my guess would be that the December number should have been bigger than November — 687.5 or 697.5 rather than 667.5
A little Googling tells me that the USPS had an early retirement program with a $15000 incentive that had to be exercised by Dec 31, 2009. Maybe that accounts for the unusual drop in workfoce in December 2009? http://blogs.federaltimes.com/federal-times-blog/2009/08/25/usps-to-offer-early-retirement-incentives/
MG,
What seems more striking is the unusually low number for December, not the January number. First, the fairly steady drop in Post Office employment is consistent with the Post Office’s earlier announcement to shed jobs…lots of jobs, mostly through retirements.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6327214.html
And don’t forget that due to certain peculiarities in the government’s compensation rules, a lot of folks choose to retire in December…especially if there is a retirement bonus. That kind of thing could result in an unusually low December figure.
But clearly things have changed because the Post Office is now on a hiring binge. So if the government is actively hiring people for Post Office jobs, then I would expect employment numbers to go up, wouldn’t you? If you’re interested in a new carerr opportunity, see here:
http://postalexamoffice.com/?gclid=CMHizrWt4J8CFQUeDQodeHo9GQ
So what could explain all this? Well, we are in a recession and I can’t imagine that a President would not want to do the one thing over which he has a fair amount of control, and that’s pumping up government employment. But the postal business is itself highly susceptible to the business cycle, and given that the recession probably bottomed out about 6 months ago, it makes sense to begin hiring. There are other reasons. For example, DHL is no longer a player, so that puts added burden on the Post Office. And even UPS is going through some restructuring. A month ago they announced job cuts of 1800:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6072P220100108
And the other day I heard something on the radio about UPS possibly laying off another 6000. I think it’s fair to assume that the Post Office probably had some advance knowledge.
I agree that the December number is out of line.
I agree that the retirements would have had an impact, whether reflected in the December or January data. Or both. If the number of retirements exceeded the level anticipated, the number of replacement hires might show up as a bubble internally though net employment should be down.
That doesn’t fully explain why the normal December employment gain at some level didn’t occur; those are temp gains. Moreover, the January number indicates that the U.S. Postal Service probably hasn’t hit its planned reduction targets announced earlier in 2009. I would have expected the Jan employment to be lower than Nov employment.
The question I have is whether the employment hires include postal route contractors. I wouldn’t think so.
I would be curious to hear your take on these two papers:
Optimal Asset Location and Allocation
with Taxable and Tax-Deferred Investing
Robert M. Dammon, Chester S. Spatt and Harold H. Zhang), Journal of Finance 59, 2004. This paper is nominated for the 2004 Smith Breeden prize.
“Capital Gains Taxes and Portfolio Rebalancing,” (Robert M. Dammon, Chester S. Spatt and Harold H. Zhang), Research Dialogue, 75, 2003.