U.S. payrolls rise by 228,000 in March, but unemployment rate increases to 4.2%

[Wiz Imp]

28. I don't know why you refuse to accept it, but you still have several facts wrong.

compiling and calculating are NOT synonyms. I have checked over half a dozen thesaurus/synonym sites online and have not found a single one that lists compile as a synonym for calculate. And I've never heard the word compile used to mean calculate in any way.

The national weekly unemployment claims are compiled (added together from state numbers)

The national job numbers are calculated by plugging the survey responses into a mathematical formula. A completely different process.

Additional statements you are wrong about:

they are surveying states (who manage those programs) to get that data.

This is completely wrong. BLS is not surveying states and the states do not manage those programs. The national jobs numbers are completely controlled by BLS - states have zero input. your statement is 100% false.

When there are disasters or other issues IN STATES, the returns from those states can be and have been "delayed", but they will be included in the next month's report.

Once again, completely wrong. There are no "returns" from states as they have no part in the process. There nothing to include in the next month's report. This statement is also 100% false.

If you're trying to get at this issue:

Final employment numbers for March won’t be out until May. BLS revises its payroll survey data in each of the two months following an initial release. BLS revises the data using additional survey responses that come in late, and by making further seasonal adjustments.

that has happened since the beginning of the survey and really has nothing to do with disasters. The survey has a very tight window in which employers can respond and be used in the preliminary estimates. Some employers are never able to meet that window, meaning their responses only ever go into the calculations of the revised numbers. And to be clear this has to do with survey responses from employers NOT "returns" from states.

The point is that BLS is compiling and reporting what they receive and is not personally generating their own numbers

I'll give you a little leeway here due to your misuse of the word compiling but you are still wrong. I already explained that that the survey responses are plugged into mathematical formulas to generate the jobs "estimates". BLS does not report what they receive - the individual survey responses are what BLS receives and they are never reported. By plugging the survey responses into mathematical formulas, BLS does, in fact, generate the jobs numbers themselves.

This survey has been done monthly for like 85 years and to this point, the published numbers have always been 100% the numbers generated from the mathematical formulas. They have NEVER been changed due to political pressure. Only a handful of people (other than the statisticians/economists responsible for generating them) see the numbers prior to publication at 8:30 AM on the "First Friday" of every month (I'm pretty sure that number is less than 10 and maybe less than 5). That includes the President who learns the numbers at the same time as everyone else - at 8:30 AM. So if that is the point you were trying to make, that is correct. However, you'd have to be a naive fool to think that this administration will definitely respect the historical norms moving forward. I still know numerous people who work on this program at BLS and they are very fearful that at some point the Trump administration will ignore the real numbers calculated from the survey and publish made up numbers more to their liking (or even worse, ask the BLS statisticians to fudge the numbers themselves). That does not appear to have happened yet, but it is a very real possibility.