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https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-jobs-july-2026-9.729...
What's actually being tracked by people using this data is the delta from previous years -- which, conditioning on the same collection methodology etc -- is more reliable.
The actionable piece of info is sign(delta)
Yes, they do publish them, but it is disappointing their primary releases do not have them.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
The problem is that small businesses lag by 1-2 months reporting them, so the initial number being reported is almost always irrelevant, as it mostly applies to numbers coming out of larger corporations.
That doesn't mean they don't warrant error bars.
Error bars aren't there to show that you didn't do a good job collecting the data, they're there to show your level of uncertainty.
It is literally calling/writing 60,000 people and asking "are you employed? did you look for a job? Etc."
"How the government calculates unemployment" [0]
| Does anyone in this household have a business or a farm? | Last week, did you do any work for (either) pay (or profit)? | If the answer to question 1 is "yes" and the answer to question 2 is "no," the next question is: | Last week, did you do any unpaid work in the family business or farm? | For those who reply "no" to both questions 2 and 3, the next key questions used to determine employment status are: | Last week, (in addition to the business) did you have a job, either full or part time? Include any job from which you were temporarily absent. | Last week, were you on layoff from a job? | What was the main reason you were absent from work last week? | For those who respond "yes" to question 5 about being on layoff, the following questions are asked:
[0] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/05/economy/cpi-data-bls-reductio...
As a data scientist/generic programmer now, I don't really see them anywhere. I remember a colleague during my postdoc saying 'don't worry, no error bars in industry' when I asked about regression with ML lol
This is not entirely accurate. AFAIK, teachers usually remain on payroll throughout the summer. This stat _might_ be talking about contractual teaching roles, like adjuncts or subs, but it's hard to say from that BLS category.
Especially if its not in a well funded area.
This is one of the major things that has helped explain why US consumer sentiment has been so out of step with headline numbers like employment, consumer spending, and GDP.
It also helps explain why there's so many economists are saying they see limited evidence of a "K-shaped economy", and say they see positive numbers throughout the distribution. It's very difficult to choose not to buy healthcare.
(The UK spends very roughly half of what the US spends on healthcare in terms of percentage of GDP. That's total (public plus private) expenditure. Singapore spends very roughtly half of what the UK spends by the same measure. Health outcomes amongst the three countries are comparable. If anything, Singapore is healthier.)
People run to dismiss this with "well we need a different system then", but the problem is a fundamental one on par with "eating your cake and having it too".
The only way to get as close as possible to "good" healthcare is to have enough money to pay for everything out of pocket.
Any sector that's resistant to productivity growth is liable to become bigger and bigger part of the economy.
in fairness also regulation makes it hard when it specificies the solutions not the parameters (just to illustrate the idea not an actual rule: you must have X thickness of PVC versus your pipe must withstand X pressure)
All of these have led to conditions where it is expected for an entire house to go from start to finish in 100 days. A house with very high standards of plumbing, electrical, hvac, insulation, and other essentials compared to previous generations.
U.S. healthcare is a giant predatory clusterfuck and seems impossible to meaningfully reform.
Americans of all ages are spending more on healthcare, and seeking more healthcare interventions than in previous decades.
(Unemployment also generally causes lower inflation in general, at least according to the prevailing macroeconomic school of thought.)
Folks keep predicting it. Maybe it's starting?
I'm not actually suggesting there's a good reason for market swings, just that bad news shouldn't necessarily cause the market to go down.
But I have to inform you all that we are in a period of stagflation and there is no way out but pain for someone. Either the asset holders or the regular people who need to buy things.
-whispering to self-
"carry the 2... oh no this can't be good"
-pencil noises-
I solved the equation!!!
We must lay off 1 million more, it is the only way to fix the interest rate!
You guys care about the interest rate don't you???
No more jobs until the books are balanced!!!
We have to it's the only way
Can't have the plebes unionizing or getting more compensation.
in the meantime stock market is going to do another major boom cycle
> in the meantime stock market is going to do another major boom cycle
Citation needed
no citation needed, its common knowledge that rates drive stock market by acting as a gate to control money flowing between money market and stock market but to explain that is really not my responsibility, a very worrying sign that many Americans are seemingly not aware how much of sway the Federal Reserve play on the global economy.
it's all about optics for mid term.
This is chickens coming home to roost from US actions in Iran, with tariffs, and other things introducing economic uncertainty.
As you alluded to; this is terrible for Republicans in power. And quite useful for Democrats.
As far as the government is concerned if you have been looking for a job for so long and/or are so discouraged that you stop looking, then you are no longer "unemployed" since you are not looking for a job.
If you are software engineer who has not been able find a software job, and are now flipping burgers to at least have some income, then you have also dropped off the government stats since you now have a job.
And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything, and threatening anyone who doesn't support his lies, and it seems we have truly entered a post-truth world where "alternate facts" rule the day.
When you read headlines of companies laying off thousands of employees, that's real. When the government says they've retroactively adjusted their seasonally adjusted fake news, then not so much.
Are most teachers considered and counted as unemployed during summner break? All the teachers I know are paid 12 months a year. 10-month appointments are seen in colleges and universities but even there professors often have grants that pay for their research in the summer and even if not I don't think I'd consider them "unemployed" in the summer.
We also have 4.8 million that are part-time employed, but want full-time work. That’s up from 4.7 million last month, and up from 4.5 million in June 2025, and up further from 4.2 million in June 2024.
There’s also 6.0 million that want a job, but aren’t employed. This is the same as June 2025, but up by 800,000 since June 2024.
So if you take the U-3 number (what’s reported) then factor in the other two figures, you really have 10.5% that are unemployed, discouraged, or underemployed.
—
The other question never answered is, “How many jobs are needed to create equilibrium?”, or where the employment rate remains stable. That’s NEVER talked about by media or the BLS, but it’s actually not difficult to get an approximate answer.
You’d want to look at population growth rates for 18-22 years ago (as those people would now be entering the workforce), multiply that by the labor force participation rate, and then divide as appropriate for the period. Typically, the US economy would need 140,000 - 145,000 new seasonally-adjusted jobs created every month to maintain a steady employment rate, given its historic and current population growth rates.
Yes, it's called people getting older and retiring. It's pretty obvious that's the cause if you compare the labor force participation rate overall vs for 25-54 year olds.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen underemployment charts too that seemed to track something like “people with degrees or certifications outside their field”.
They don’t normally make headlines, though. The charts and stats for those are clearly for economists and not formatted to make good headlines on the news.
> ...
>When you read headlines of companies laying off thousands of employees, that's real. When the government says they've retroactively adjusted their seasonally adjusted fake news, then not so much.
The BLS keeps track of the discouraged workers as well, and it's not significantly different than previous trends.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/alternative-...
>And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything, and threatening anyone who doesn't support his lies, and it seems we have truly entered a post-truth world where "alternate facts" rule the day.
You don't see the irony here with what you're doing?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-seeks-to-fire-bu...
And I suspect, sometime in the future, we're going to discover that the numbers were even worse than we thought they were—were covered up.
And when a vast majority of the population isn't working what do these numbers really tell us? If we have fewer jobs, but then the people doing those jobs are paid more and thus paying more in taxes, maybe the jobs numbers don't even matter (I'm not sure that's true, just for arguments sake).
And let's say they were covered up. Ok and what does that change? Are people who already hate Donald Trump going to vote harder and then, what? Pursue the same economic policy? Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.
If the taxes were being spent to help those who were not working (unable to or for whatever reason) maybe that would be fine. We might take in more taxes, but when we cut funding for childhood cancer research, and build more missiles... is this really the way we want our money spent?
> Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.
Perhaps there was more overlap 10 years ago, but... that "both sides are just as bad" doesn't seem to ring true.
> In yet another troubling sign for the labor market, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that it revised down the prior two months by a combined 103,000. May’s jobs total was cut by 66,000 to 129,000 total jobs added, while June’s total was lowered by 37,000 to a total gain of 57,000.
It looks to me like a failure of the American media landscape, that such constant revisal trends are not called out in the reporting of new numbers. That just makes them a mouthpiece of the government.
I'd suspect better computing helps a lot here.
https://xcancel.com/ernietedeschi/status/1951721848393105573
ADP Payrolls are a lower latency indicator but not quite as broad.
Is it the case that the numbers always appear more optimistic, and then are revised to be more pessimistic values? Or is it just that the original numbers are off and are revised? Does that make sense?
Economics is an imperfect science.
> Gains were focused on the private sector, with strength in wholesale and retail trade, finance and insurance, and professional and scientific services. Public sector jobs fell by 14,500 amid an official bid to cut government spending.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-can...
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=361007...
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260807/dq260...
https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/9.7299225
Private-sector jobs: +58,000 jobs [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Government/public-sector jobs:-27,000 jobs (a decline) [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Self-employed: +44,000 jobs [wealthprof...ssional.ca], [retail-insider.com]
Part-time jobs: +36,600 jobs [money.usnews.com], [ca.finance.yahoo.com]
Lateral Thinkers: quietly sipping tea, nursing our wounds from layoffs, lamenting another unheard Cassandra moment.
Basically sums up the mood, I find. Don’t worry, we’re always steeping a fresh pot for the new club members when stories like these hit the wire.
I began rapidly recalling the hundreds of sources foreseeing this well in advance, citing it, raising alarm, and being ignored.
I guess we are supposed to take numbers at face value, disregard what generated them and why, accept what they imply as presented, and never question it.
Then we must patiently withhold intelligence, wait for sanctioned admission, then finally consider what we already knew.
Suddenly, Rome collapsed.
Edit: Don't take the flagging to heart. If you dig, you will find a thousand exceptions made where the single-word comment fit the narrative and endured. This comment will be flagged too.