The massive number of immigrants who have crossed into the United States at the southern border over the last year may be the cause of diverging government data detailing job growthand the unemployment rate, according to The Wall Street Journal. While the U.S. economy has seen relatively strong job growth over the last year, the unemployment rate has also begun to creep up — leaving economists and labor market analysts stumped.
Monthly employment data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is based on two surveys that measure job growth and the unemployment rate using slightly different methodologies.
The ‘establishment survey’ — used to determine how many jobs the economy has added in a given month — is based on data collected from over 100,000 businesses and government agencies. Meanwhile, the ‘household survey’ is based on a rotating poll of around 60,000 American households and is used to calculate the unemployment rate.
In the latter survey, the U.S. government uses the percentage of respondents who say they are working and applies that number to the Census Bureau‘s population data.
The census data, however, has not accounted for the millions of immigrants who have entered the country over the past year. That discrepancy could cause the divergence in data and explain why the U.S. economy hasn’t overheated from the increased job growth.
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