Payroll & Non-Payroll Employment

What are Non-Payroll Jobs?
The Payroll Survey talks to business and counts "regular" jobs. The Household Survey talks to households and counts all payroll jobs and many kinds of informal jobs. The Payroll Survey is the preferred indicator of labor market growth. Subtracting payroll jobs from all household jobs gives the non-payroll jobs shown in the graph above.

When Payroll Jobs Go Down, Non-Payroll Jobs Go Up
Notice that just as payroll job growth started to slow, non-payroll jobs, which tend to decline in good times, started to increase. It's good they did, but it was not a sign of good times. As payroll jobs fell by 2.7 million, non-payroll jobs increased by 2 million. Unfortunately, to keep up with normal population/labor-market growth we needed an increase of over 3 million jobs during that period, so this increase in non-payroll jobs fell far short in quantity as well as quality. More people take non-payroll jobs when unemployment is worse, another indication of their poor quality..

Source: BLS data and spreadsheet.

http://zfacts.com/p/740.html | 01/18/12 07:25 GMT
Modified: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 17:51:21 GMT