Issues in Labor Statistics: Labor Force Flows in the Most Recent Recession, Summary 10-08

摘要

Each month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports the number of people in each of three labor force categories--employed, unemployed, or not in the labor force--from data collected in the Current Population Survey (CPS). Changes in these estimates are widely used measures of the overall health of the labor market. Underlying these often relatively small net changes is a great deal more churning: millions of people change their labor force status among the three categories on a monthly basis. BLS reports estimates of the number of people changing their labor force status from one month to the next. These labor force flow data series are available from February 1990 forward.