superrific
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So in the jobs report today, the single biggest category of job increases were in state and local education. Yes, that's counterintuitive, right? So it turns out that the jobs declined, but less than usual so the seasonal adjustment treated it as a gain. But why would there be fewer job losses this summer? Thought I'd go to the source:
1. Do teachers consider themselves unemployed during the summer? Like, if someone from the Bureau of Labor Statistics called you and asked, "are you employed," and you're a first grade teacher in July, would the answer be yes or no?
2. Many teachers work other jobs during the summer. Let's say they drive Uber -- I don't mean to stereotype, I'm just picking an easy example. So anyway, if a teacher is driving Uber over the summer, would they tend to say their employment was at Uber or would they still say they were a teacher?
3. So what if the temp jobs at places like Uber don't materialize this summer? So fewer teachers drive Uber, meaning that more teachers are doing nothing. Would that make them more likely to report employment as a teacher?
Note that there are two jobs reports: the establishment survey (where the numbers are provided by employers) and the household survey (which are generated by calling people and asking about their employment). Some divergence between the two is expected. The questions I'm asking primarily relate to the household survey. The household #s aren't broken down very finely, so it's hard to compare apples to apples. It does appear that there's not a big gap between the two, meaning that my questions 1-3 are only part of the puzzle but anyway:
4. Would there be any reason that schools would have higher staffing numbers this summer? There were about 160K more jobs in education this June than last June. This makes no sense to me. My questions above were asking, in effect, whether this is a statistical artefact. This question is asking is there any unusual factor that would lead to such an increase.
1. Do teachers consider themselves unemployed during the summer? Like, if someone from the Bureau of Labor Statistics called you and asked, "are you employed," and you're a first grade teacher in July, would the answer be yes or no?
2. Many teachers work other jobs during the summer. Let's say they drive Uber -- I don't mean to stereotype, I'm just picking an easy example. So anyway, if a teacher is driving Uber over the summer, would they tend to say their employment was at Uber or would they still say they were a teacher?
3. So what if the temp jobs at places like Uber don't materialize this summer? So fewer teachers drive Uber, meaning that more teachers are doing nothing. Would that make them more likely to report employment as a teacher?
Note that there are two jobs reports: the establishment survey (where the numbers are provided by employers) and the household survey (which are generated by calling people and asking about their employment). Some divergence between the two is expected. The questions I'm asking primarily relate to the household survey. The household #s aren't broken down very finely, so it's hard to compare apples to apples. It does appear that there's not a big gap between the two, meaning that my questions 1-3 are only part of the puzzle but anyway:
4. Would there be any reason that schools would have higher staffing numbers this summer? There were about 160K more jobs in education this June than last June. This makes no sense to me. My questions above were asking, in effect, whether this is a statistical artefact. This question is asking is there any unusual factor that would lead to such an increase.