Category: data quality

Reading between the lines: What Trump’s Budget Blueprint may mean for funding statistics

Reading between the lines: What Trump’s Budget Blueprint may mean for funding statistics

This morning, the Trump Administration released a “Blueprint” for its first Budget, which proposes dramatic cuts and restructuring of non-defense discretionary spending. Of course, I immediately searched the document for the impact on federal statistics. Although the document runs 62 pages, it’s really just a CliffsNotes version of the full budget, which will run hundreds …

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How reliable are the employment/unemployment data? Standard errors and mean absolute revisions

How reliable are the employment/unemployment data? Standard errors and mean absolute revisions

At 8:30 am tomorrow (March 10), BLS will release the “Employment Situation” for February. I expect most of the media attention will focus on whether U.S. employment growth accelerated or decelerated in the first month of the Trump administration—Trump has already tweeted about an ADP jobs report that was above expections. (ADP is a private-sector payroll services …

Read More How reliable are the employment/unemployment data? Standard errors and mean absolute revisions