The job report on Friday will be confusing. Here you can find out how you can understand it.

The latest monthly report by the Ministry of Labor and Unemployment will include revisions for earlier months that should give a more precise picture of the US labor market – but that could also sow.

If the data is published on Friday, an important level for employment will be revised. Another is revised. Some historical numbers are revised, others are not. And the updates, although part of a routine process, will take place in a political environment in which both sides have temporarily expressed skepticism against the government's economic statistics.

“There will be a huge degree of confusion,” said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, an economic -political arm of Brooking's institution.

Here is what economists say that you need to know about the revisions to understand the numbers.

The revisions are part of a long -term annual procedure.

The monthly work figures are based on two surveys, one of employers and one of households. These surveys are generally reliable – they contain a number of interviews that are much larger than a choice of the presidential election – but they are not perfect. And once a year comparable to the government with less promptly but more reliable data from other sources. Similar processes are available to revise other state statistics such as gross domestic products and personal income.

“Revices are how statistical agencies achieve both topicality and accuracy,” said Jed Kolko, who supervised the economic statistics in the trade department during the bidges. “Close -up data such as the job report will be revised later to meet other data sources that are more precise but take longer to collect and publish.”

The revisions published on Friday were planned well in advance and will be used in advance that enabled economists, including Mr. Kolko and Ms. Edelberg, to publish detailed forecasts, which will show the new figures.

This transparency should trust people in the revision process, said Kolko. If statistical agencies make inexplicable or unannounced updates, he added that “trust in state statistics could undermine.

The latest employment growth is revised.

In August, the Ministry of Labor published preliminary data, based on records of state unemployment insurance offices, which carried out that employers in 2023 and early 2024 have added around 818,000 jobs less than originally reported. On Friday, the department will publish an updated version of these figures and incorporate it into the official job data.

The final revision, which has influenced the order amounts for each month since March 2023, could be larger or smaller than the preliminary estimate. But it will almost certainly be the greatest in recent years, possibly the greatest downward adjustment since 2009. This will look weaker than previously reported.

Nevertheless, the updated numbers probably do not change the basic narrative of a solid labor market. You could even appear the latest slowdown in setting the sum, since in 2023 you will make the big workplace gains smaller.

Labor estimates will be misleading.

The other revisions, if at all, are even more complicated.

Data on the employment population – including estimates of employment and unemployment – come from a monthly survey among households that are officially known as the current population survey. The answers in this survey are weighted in order to meet the population estimates produced annually by the Census Bureau.

For a variety of reasons, the Census Bureau has had difficulties in recent years to completely explain the increase in immigration and to underestimate the population growth rate. In December, the office published new numbers with an updated methodology, of which its experts believe that the recent immigration better grasped – and which showed a much faster population growth in 2023 and 2024.

The job report on Friday will be the first to use these new estimates. In accordance with its previous practice, however, the government will not revise any of the historical budget data. Instead, the new population in practically every measure based on them will also jump as a large, one -month increase.

Of course, the workers did not really grow by two million people in January. This growth has occurred in recent years. As a result, the January numbers will not be comparable to previous estimates – it will not be possible, for example, to say how many people have joined the employment population since pandemic. (At least not on data from the official Ministry of Labor – Mr. Kolko and others plan to create their own unofficial revisions of historical figures.)

Fortunately, measures that are based on conditions – such as the unemployment rate and the employment participation – should usually not be affected by the population updates. These are the measures that most economists concentrate on anyway.

The revisions will help solve a puzzle.

At first glance, it may seem strange that a measure of employment is revised and another down. However, the new data should help solve a disagreement between the two sources that have sent contradictory signals for years.

According to the survey among employers, the US economy had 7.2 million more jobs in December than on the evening before the pandemic in February 2020. However, the survey under households shows a profit of only 3.1 million jobs in the same period. The two sources often move in different directions in short periods of time, but it is rare that a gap is so big or lasts for so long.

The revisions on Friday should make a major contribution to closing this gap. Ms. Edelberg estimated that after the updates, the discrepancy between the two surveys should shrink from more than four million to less than half a million within the normal level.

You will also dispel a myth.

The latest jobs have shown that employment has grown among immigrants, but has fallen in the local Americans. However, this data is misleading.

The budget survey correctly showed that immigrants have made a larger proportion of workers in recent years. However, the size of these workers was based on the estimates of the Census Bureau, which underestimated the recent population growth. The data published by the Ministry of Labor therefore underestimated employment among immigrants and local workers alike.

Since the Ministry of Labor does not revise the data of the historical budget survey, it is not possible to see how employment among local or foreign employees has changed in recent years. However, the new figures should make it clear that employment with born workers has also grown, not only with immigrants.