Months from now, the Establishment Survey will undergo its annual retrospective benchmark revision, based almost entirely on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages conducted by the Labor Department. ...
The latest QCEW data are available through 2018, but note how much worse the 2018 QCEW data look than the Establishment Survey data, even though the two appear fairly similar in previous years, for which the latter has already undergone the requisite revisions. The Establishment Survey’s nonfarm jobs figures will clearly be revised down as the QCEW data show job growth averaging only 177,000 a month in 2018. That means the Establishment Survey may be overstating the real numbers by more than 25%.
