Jobless rate falls in the City?
(March 29, 2007) — The number of total non-farm jobs in the Rochester region rose by 1,100 jobs or 0.8 of a percent in February, according to the latest data from the State Department of Labor released today.
There were 507,400 people employed in non-farm jobs for the month, compared to 506,300 in February of last year.
Unemployment for the month was 5.1 percent, compared to 5.3 percent last year.
Anyone have the population numbers? I don’t, but I’d be willing to bet the population decreased during the year… hence lowering the unemployment rate… It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had funny numbers on our unemployment rate.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics computes national and local unemployment statistics from a survey. You can read the details here if you want, but the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter if the population goes up or down, because the size of the population is not used in these estimates.
Further, I would definitely caution against making any big deal out of a one month change from 5.3% to 5.1%. I don’t know if that’s within the level of noise of the survey, but I have a fundamental concern about reacting to relatively small one month changes.
Thanks Paige,
I wasn’t sure how these numbers were computed since this is a bit out of my area of expertise. I agree that a 0.2% change isn’t very significant but it seems like a headline for for Maggie to tout. I will say that it seems odd that population isn’t included in an unemployment estimate however… that seems rather basic, but I suppose you’d always need updated census information.
In the simplest form, lets say you survey 100 households in Rochester, and you find there are 10 adults unemployed out of 156 adults in those households. The unemployment rate is … well, you do the math. As you can see, the size of the population doesn’t enter into this calculation at all.
In reality, The Bureau of Labor Statistics (where I once was employed) uses a more complicated method that takes household survey data as above, and adjust for demographics, adjusts for non-response, and adjusts for other things that I can’t think of, and once you do all that complicated math, you get a number that represents the unemployment rate. Once again, the size of the population isn’t needed.
Incomplete link. The link above was how BLS computes employment numbers. Here is the link on how the unemployment percent is computed. Again, it comes from a survey.