Julia Coronado:
So again, we get this quarterly census of employment. It’s based on the administrative data that underpins the unemployment insurance system that covers pretty much every worker in the country. So we do want to know on a quarterly basis how many people are working in the economy. And it’s really strong, comprehensive data.
But, again, it’s not timely. And we really want to know in real time, so we have this monthly jobs report. So we could see as that quarterly data came in that the payroll numbers that we look at every month were a little bit stronger than — each month than what that quarterly data suggested.
And now we have other measures like ADP private payrolls. We have got several metrics of independent data. And then, of course, we have the unemployment rate, which is what tells us whether a lot of people who want to work are not finding jobs. Excuse me. And that’s not affected by this benchmark revision.
The unemployment rate still is our best measure of weakness. And what that is telling us right now is that there’s a little bit of weakness creeping in, but that even though job creation was a bit smaller over the prior year, unemployment was still pretty low.
