This isn't good news about the job market


I noticed this in the Employment Situation report on Friday, and was wondering why nobody was talking about it. What this means is that the economy is adding jobs, as was announced on Friday. We had lost more jobs than we thought we had, though, so our overall number of jobs is lower. This will be incorporated into the establishment survey's job estimates next February.

Yahoo! News - Data Revision Confirms Weak Jobs Picture
Statisticians at the Labor Department said they expect to revise down U.S. payroll employment by about 145,000 for the March 2003 reference month -- effectively showing even greater weakness in the sluggish labor market than previously thought.

The downward adjustment surprised Wall Street, which had been rife with speculation this week that Labor would adjust the figures up, bringing payrolls more in line with another survey which has shown a recent improvement in the job market.

"The expectation was that this revision would be positive, that we would be looking at a number in excess of 300,000," said Anthony Chan, chief economist at Banc One Investment Advisors.

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