Jobs Report Non Farm Payroll Variability

Jobs Report Non Farm Payroll Variability

When the non farm payroll number gets reported each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will often say the actual number can vary by as much as 100,000 jobs above or below the reported number. But how variable are the numbers ?  To find out we computed a 12 month moving average of the changes. We then added upper and lower limits equal to 2 times the standard deviation.  

The blue line below is the 12 month moving average while the green line represents the upper limit and the red line the lower limit. The NFP moving average change plummets to minus 600,000 in June of 2009.  We were losing an average of 600K jobs per month. The average rebounds from their so that by December 2011 we were gaining 200K jobs per month.  

The trend has been remarkably stable since then with the economy generating about 200K jobs per month since December 2011.