The Ugliest US Unemployment Chart Just Got A Sight Nastier

10-08-2010 • CalculatedRiskBlog.com

This morning I mentioned the annual benchmark revision for the employment report - here are some more details, and a graph showing the impact on job losses. As part of the employment report, the BLS released the preliminary annual benchmark revision of minus 366,000 payroll jobs. This will be finalized next February when the January 2011 employment report is released. Usually the preliminary estimate is pretty close to the final benchmark estimate. This graph shows the impact of the preliminary benchmark revision on job losses in percentage terms from the start of the employment recession. The red line on the graph is the current estimate, and the dotted line shows the impact of estimated coming benchmark revision. This puts the current payroll employment about 8.1 million jobs below the pre-recession peak in December 2007.