Different Counts of NFP Gains

All show gains since January 2023, save the CPS based.

Figure 1: Cumulative change in NFP employment according to CES (bold black), implied preliminary benchmark (blue), early benchmark (tan), Goldman Sachs estimate (light blue square), CPS adjusted to NFP concept (teal), QCEW total covered, nsa (dark red), and QCEW seasonally adjusted by author using X-13 (in logs) (salmon), all in 000’s. Source: BLS via FRED, BLS, Philadelphia Fed, and author’s calculations.

Note that the CPS series adjusted to NFP will be downwardly biased if the overall CPS series is downwardly biased. This is likely the case, as discussed here.

so… not yet time to panic about recession, at least by NFP employment figures.