Richmond Area Employment – June 2011 (PDF)

Employment Declined Locally Over the Year; Increased Nationwide

Total nonfarm employment for the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area stood at 601,500 in June 2011, down 8,700, or 1.4 percent, over the year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. During the same period, the national job count rose 0.9 percent. Sheila Watkins, the Bureau’s regional commissioner, noted that the June 2011 employment decrease was the third consecutive over-the-year decline in the Richmond metropolitan area. (See chart 1 and table 1; Technical Note at end of release contains metropolitan area definitions. All data in this release are not seasonally adjusted; accordingly, over-the-year analysis is used throughout.)

In the greater Richmond metropolitan area, the trade, transportation, and utilities supersector lost 4,500 jobs from June 2010 to June 2011, more than any other industry. The recent loss represented a 4.0-percent employment decline from last June. Nationally, trade, transportation, and utilities employment increased 1.4 percent from the previous year.

Three other industries in the Richmond area recorded job losses of 1,000 or greater over the year: financial activities (-3,200), leisure and hospitality (-3,100), and government (-1,600). The financial activities supersector has posted consecutive over-the-year declines in employment since July 2006. Nationwide, the financial activities and government supersectors lost jobs since June a year ago; leisure and hospitality, in contrast, added to its job count. (See chart 2.)

Two supersectors reported employmment gains in the Richmond area from June 2010—professional and business services and education and health services. Professional and business services added the largest number of jobs, 3,100, growing at a 3.4-percent pace, compared to the national increase of 3.1 percent. In education and health services, employment was up 1,800 or 2.1 percent, matching the nationwide rate of growth.

Technical Note

This release presents nonfarm payroll employment estimates from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program. The CES survey is a Federal-State cooperative endeavor between State employment security agencies and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Definitions. Employment data refer to persons on establishment payrolls who receive pay for any part of the pay period which includes the 12th of the month. Persons are counted at their place of work rather than at their place of residence; those appearing on more than one payroll are counted on each payroll. Industries are classified on the basis of their principal activity in accordance with the 2007 version of the North American Industry Classification System.

Method of estimation. The employment data are estimated using a "link relative" technique in which a ratio (link relative) of current-month employment to that of the previous month is computed from a sample of establishments reporting for both months. The estimates of employment for the current month are obtained by multiplying the estimates for the previous month by these ratios. Small-domain models are used as the official estimators for approximately 39 percent of CES published series which have insufficient sample for direct sample-based estimates.

Annual revisions. Employment estimates are adjusted annually to a complete count of jobs, called benchmarks, derived principally from tax reports which are submitted by employers who are covered under state unemployment insurance (UI) laws. The benchmark information is used to adjust the monthly estimates between the new benchmark and the preceding one and also to establish the level of employment for the new benchmark month. Thus, the benchmarking process establishes the level of employment, and the sample is used to measure the month-to-month changes in the level for the subsequent months.

Reliability of the estimates. The estimates presented in this release are based on sample survey and administrative data and thus are subject to sampling and other types of errors. Sampling error is a measure of sampling variability—that is, variation that occurs by chance because a sample rather than the entire population is surveyed. Survey data are also subject to nonsampling errors, such as those which can be introduced into the data collection and processing operations. Estimates not directly derived from sample surveys are subject to additional errors resulting from the special estimation processes used. The sums of individual items may not always equal the totals shown in the same tables because of rounding.

Employment estimates. Measures of sampling error for state CES data at the supersector level are available on the BLS Web site at www.bls.gov/sae/790stderr.htm. Information on recent benchmark revisions for states is available at www.bls.gov/sae/.

Additional information

More complete information on the technical procedures used to develop these estimates and additional data appear in Employment and Earnings, which is available by subscription from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402 (telephone 202-512-1800).

Industry employment data for states and metropolitan areas from the CES program are also available in the above mentioned news releases and from the Internet at (www.bls.gov/sae/).

For personal assistance or further information on the Current Employment Statistics program, as well as other Bureau programs, contact the Mid-Atlantic Information Office at 215-597-3282 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET.

Area definitions. The substate area data published in this release reflect the standards and definitions established by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, dated December 1, 2009. A detailed list of the geographic definitions is available at www.bls.gov/lau/lausmsa.htm.

The Richmond, Va. Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) includes Amelia, Caroline, Charles City, Chesterfield, Cumberland, Dinwiddie, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico, King and Queen, King William, Louisa, New Kent, Powhatan, Prince George, and Sussex Counties and Colonial Heights, Hopewell, Petersburg, and Richmond cities in Virginia.