Modification to August/September 2011 Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) Estimates to Account for a Strike in the Telecommunications Industry

The preliminary JOLTS estimates for August (released on October 12, 2011) did not reflect a necessary adjustment to account for a strike in the telecommunications industry—a part of the information sector. The final estimates for August, as well as the preliminary estimates for September (released on November 8, 2011) reflect the adjustment.

Each month, JOLTS estimates are aligned to the over-the-month change in employment as measured by the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program. In the alignment process, the JOLTS implied employment change (hires minus separations) is compared to the CES over-the-month change. If JOLTS is higher than CES, hires are removed and separations are added to the JOLTS data to bring them into alignment with CES. If JOLTS is lower than CES, hires are added and separations are removed. Once the hires and separations are consistent with CES, the seasonal adjustment is backed out by applying the seasonal factors in reverse, to arrive at an unadjusted JOLTS series.

The alignment process ensures that over the long term, JOLTS hires and separations are consistent with changes in employment levels as measured by the CES. However, JOLTS measures the forming and breaking of employment relationships through hires and separations. As such, JOLTS does not consider employees who are on strike to be separated, and JOLTS does not count employees returning to work after a strike to be hires. This means that a strike should not show up in the JOLTS series. However, striking workers are not counted as employed in the CES. The drop in CES information employment in August caused by a telecommunications strike created a divergence with the JOLTS series. The alignment process then adjusted the JOLTS hires and separations to reflect this employment drop and eliminate the divergence. Hires, job openings, and separations were unnecessarily added and removed to account for workers going out on strike in August.

With the release of September preliminary estimates, CES employment levels used in the alignment process have been modified. Striking telecommunications workers were added back into the August CES employment level used in alignment. This eliminated the large adjustments that had been introduced by the alignment process. For future JOLTS estimation, the process will be modified to include a procedure that can be used whenever there is a large movement in the CES that should not be reflected in JOLTS.

JOLTS releases estimates for each month twice. The first release of a given month is considered "preliminary" and the second month is considered "final." JOLTS estimates usually change between the first and second release, due to the collection of additional data and to updated concurrent seasonal adjustment factors. The modifications to the alignment process were introduced simultaneously with the regular revisions of the August estimates from "preliminary" to "final." Therefore, it is not possible to accurately quantify how much of the change from the preliminary estimates to final estimates is due to the adjustment in the alignment process. While many of the August estimates changed from the first release to the second release, only a subset of these estimates are impacted by the adjustment to the Information sector. A list of the series codes impacted by this adjustment appears below. For additional information about this change, please contact the JOLTS information line at (202) 691-5870.

Last Modified Date: November 8, 2011