One Friday morning each month at 8:30 is always an exciting time here at the Atlanta Fed. Why, you might ask? Because that's when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issues the newest employment and labor force statistics from the Employment Situation Summary. Just after the release, Atlanta Fed analysts compile a "first look" report based on the latest numbers. We have found this initial view to be a very useful glimpse into the broad health of the national labor market.
Because we find this report useful, we thought you might also find it of interest. To that end, we have added the Labor Report First Look tool to our website, and we'll strive to post updated data soon after the release of the BLS's Employment Situation Report. Our Labor Report First Look includes key data for the month and changes over time from both the payroll and household surveys, presented as tables and charts.Â
Additionally, we will also use the bureau's data to create other indicators included in the Labor Report First Look. For example, one of these is a depiction of changes in payroll employment by industry, in which we rank industry employment changes by average hourly pay levels. This tool allows us to see if payrolls are gaining or losing higher- or lower-paying jobs, as the following chart shows.
But wait, there's more! We will also report information on the so-called job finding rate—an estimate of the share of unemployed last month who are employed this month—and a broad measure of labor underutilization. Our underutilization concept is related to another statistic we created called Z-Pop, computed as the share of the population who are either unemployed or underemployed (working part-time hours but wanting full-time work) or who say they currently want a job but are not actively looking. We have found this to be a useful supplement to the BLS's employment-to-population ratio (see the chart).
The Labor Report First Look tool also allows you to dig a bit deeper into Atlanta Fed labor market analysis via links to our Human Capital Data & Tools (which includes the Wage Growth Tracker and Labor Force Dynamics web pages) and links to some of our blog posts on labor market developments and related research. (In fact, it's easy to stay informed of all Labor Report First Look updates by subscribing to our RSS feed or following the Atlanta Fed on Twitter.
We hope you'll look for the inaugural Labor Report First Look next Friday morning...we know you'll be as excited as we will!
By Whitney Mancuso, senior economic analyst in the Atlanta Fed's research department