Household Jobs Survery

The Household Survey has become the last refuge of economic scoundrels. Whenever anyone trots out Household Employment Survey as proof of job creation, it is an admission that they are clueless hack, or a charlatan. This has been so clearly resolved that it tortures the imagination to understand WTF this is doing in the NYTimes. For posterity, I will repeat this for the umpteenth time: the Household survey IS NOT A SUPERIOR MEASURE OF JOB CREATION to the establishment survey. However, it is a reliable source of confusing data to the layperson that it can be cherry-picked by the disingenous.

What it measures is UNemployment. No less an authority than the BLS, Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve have said that the Household Survey is not a good measure of job creation. It was never designed to measure new job creation. For more information on this, see BLS on Payroll vs. Household Survey, Redux: Household versus Establishment Surveys and this Household versus Establishment Surveys, part 42.