8 May 2014
Jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics provide counts of people in categories of employment, unemployment and change. Data also includes hours worked and average hourly earnings.
As we dig into the data, we question quality of jobs in skills, longevity and wages. Adding up all the wages and salaries is part of Compensation of Employees data reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Gross Domestic Product and Personal Consumption Expenditures data releases.
This video clip (3 min) from Modern Wall Street provides insights from reading these two data sets together. This includes why the “official” (U-3) unemployment rate is weakening as an overall measure of job market health. More on this also in the Feddashboard.com blog post on measures of job health.