Official Survey of State Employment Has Overstated Job Growth Since 2022. Since the middle of 2022, the monthly jobs reports have tended to overstate actual employment growth in the state. The monthly jobs survey has been revised downward routinely over this period, as we detailed here.
Shifting Focus Now to Hybrid Measure of Employment Growth That Has Tracked Final Data More Closely. Given the recent tendency for the monthly jobs report to overstate employment growth, we have shifted our focus to a hybrid measure of the labor market that averages the main business survey with another monthly federal survey of employment, the "household survey," which officials use to calculate the state's unemployment rate. The average of these two monthly trends has tended to track the final jobs tally more closely in recent years.
This Month's Job Trends. California's traditional jobs report suggests the state shed 11,600 jobs in March, and the February figure was revised down from -7,000 jobs to -21,800 jobs. Since January, the state's traditional jobs report has shown a net job decline of 54,800 jobs. Our hybrid measure that includes employment data from the monthly household survey suggests the state has added no net jobs over the three month period from January to March.