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Estimate of Decennial Census impact on September payroll employment: minus 78,000

By Anonymous

The Census Bureau released the weekly payroll data for the week ending September 18th today (ht Bob_in_MA).

If we subtract the number of temporary 2010 Census workers in the week containing the 12th of the month, from the same week for the previous month - this provides a close estimate for the impact of the Census hiring on payroll employment.

The Census Bureau releases the actual number with the employment report.

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph shows the number of Census workers paid each week. The red labels are the weeks of the BLS payroll survey.

The Census payroll decreased from 83,955 for the week ending August 14th to 6,038 for the week ending September 18th.

So my estimate for the impact of the Census on September payroll employment is minus 78 thousand (this will probably be close). The employment report will be released on October 8th, and the headline number for September - including Census numbers - will probably be close to zero. But a key number will be the hiring ex-Census (so we will add back the Census workers again this month).

The following table compares the weekly payroll report estimate to the monthly BLS report on Census hiring - this shows the estimate is usually very close:

	Payroll, Weekly Pay Period	Payroll, Monthly BLS	Change based on weekly report	Actual Change (monthly)
Jan	25	24
Feb	41	39	16	15
Mar	96	87	55	48
Apr	156	154	61	67
May	574	564	418	410
Jun	344	339	-230	-225
Jul	200	196	-144	-143
Aug	84	82	-116	-114
Sep	6		-78
All thousands

There are very few temporary decennial workers left on the payroll, and this month marks the end of the weekly payroll report from the Census Bureau: "These data will continue through the end of September with the last release of data being the week of Sept. 26-Oct. 2."

I'll have more on the September employment report (due Oct 8th) this Sunday in the weekly schedule.

Full post as published by Calculated Risk on September 29, 2010 (boomark / email).