The Republican: Report: Massachusetts grew jobs faster in 2011 than previously thought
The Republican featured the findings of the latest MassBenchmarks release, which examined unemployment insurance data and revised previous job growth numbers that had been attributed to the Bay State by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, finding that the state added 39,000 jobs in all of 2011, as opposed to the 9,000 jobs recorded by the BLS.
Martin A. Romitti, director of economic and public policy research at University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute and managing editor of MassBenchmarks is quoted extensively throughout the article.
Romitti said the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a survey of employers to get its jobs number. “There you get all the types of things that happen with surveys,” he said. “You talk to people who have had a bad year but that are not representative of the whole.”
The recent release looks at numbers reported by employers who’ve paid into the unemployment insurance system. The data takes a long time to wind its way through the system so it never shows up in month-to-month jobs reports.
Read article: Report: Massachusetts grew jobs faster in 2011 than previously thought
July 12, 2012
