http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/22/business/yourmoney/22view.html ECONOMIC VIEW
Two Tales of American Jobs
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
<snip>The puzzle is the enormous divergence between the two surveys that are used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to measure job creation and unemployment. The payroll survey, which is based on a monthly poll of 400,000 employers, shows a loss of more than two million jobs since 2001. The household survey, based on questions posed to people in 50,000 households, shows an increase of more than 500,000 jobs over the same period.<snip>
The household survey also seems to support a political theory: that many people dropped from the company payrolls are not unemployed but rather self-employed. While the payroll survey suggests economic malaise, the household survey implies entrepreneurial energy.<snip>
Unfortunately for the optimists, the Federal Reserve has just thrown cold water on the household data. It concludes that the gloomy payroll data is essentially accurate and that the household survey is probably off base.<snip>
The Fed's conclusion was that the household survey's results have been inflated by overestimates of population growth.<snip>
Indeed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics lowered its population estimate in January. Plugging the new estimate into the previous household surveys, the bureau found nearly half the apparent increase in jobs during the last three years vanished.<snip>