The headline monthly payroll estimates are produced by the BLS through the Establishment Survey, part of the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program. The survey collects responses from roughly 119,000 businesses and government agencies, covering about 622,000 individual worksites.
Because these figures are derived from a sample rather than a full count of employment, they are subject to statistical estimation and revision. The closest approximation to a comprehensive count of jobs is the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which compiles administrative records from unemployment insurance filings and covers roughly 97% of US employment. For this reason, the QCEW serves as the benchmark to which nonfarm payrolls are periodically revised.
Each year, the BLS benchmarks the CES data to the QCEW. In this process, the payroll level for the previous March is compared with the QCEW estimate, and the difference is distributed evenly across the prior 12 months, rather than applying it all at once (a linear “wedging” adjustment). The result is that the level of nonfarm payrolls is brought into alignment with QCEW data for March of the given benchmark year.
In recent years, these benchmark revisions have been relatively large and persistently negative. Over the past three years alone, adjustments have reduced previously reported payroll employment by a combined 1.75 million jobs.
