Benchmark revisions: CES

On March 13, 2017, concurrent with the January 2017 release of regional and state employment series, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics realigned its sample-based estimates to incorporate all counts of employment. This process is known as benchmarking (citation). As explained by the BLS:

Each year, employment estimates from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey are benchmarked to comprehensive counts of employment for the month of March. These counts are derived from State Unemployment Insurance (UI) tax records that nearly all employers are required to file.

The time-scope of this revision is:

• Not seasonally adjusted (NSA) data from April 2015.
• Seasonally adjusted (SA) data, generally from January 2012 but as early as 1990.

Benchmark revisions: LAUS

On February 28, 2017, in preparation of the benchmark, the BLS revised historical estimates from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program to reflect new population controls from the Census Bureau, updated input data, and re-estimation (see related article).

Enid, OK CBSA

With this benchmark, the BLS has added the metro area of Enid, OK (IUSA_MEND) (see related article). New series include, for example:

• ET.IUSA_MEND = Employment: Total nonfarm

Delays to related and dependent releases

Because of their scale, the benchmark revisions can take up to several days for us to digest, which necessarily postpones downstream datasets. Delays may apply to:

• The reported BLS data.
• Moody's Analytics SA and calculated metro-level data, which may take up to a week to post.
• Employment for New England metro areas, which depend on revisions to our county estimates (see related article).
• The March vintage of our regional forecasts (see related article for 2016).

Retrieving pre-benchmark data

For archival analysis, we preserve the discontinued and pre-benchmark time series, under concept codes adapted with a "_2015" suffix. For example, pre-benchmark values for ET.AR can be retrieved via the mnemonic ET_2015.AR. You will need to activate the IUSA_BLS_CESST_2015.db and IUSA_BLS_LA_2015.db databanks, using menu:Settings » Default Databanks (see related article).