https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/non-farm-payrolls Having difficulty with "Actual/Previous/Consensus/TEForecast" – what exactly are these different categories representing on their website?
It's pretty self explanatory: - Actual: The current headline number - Previous: The revised headline number for the previous month (also see text below) - Consensus: self explanatory - TEForecast: Hoover over the title to get the explanation
I understand what you're saying but could you please explain the context of consensus? if it's the predicted amount then they are appallingly bad at estimating these figures!
There are many factors that can cause the difference between consensus and actual. Note that actual data is subject to subsequent revision(s). It's pretty easy to graph the difference between the survey and actual release over time to get a better idea of the margin of error. Note however that the difference can trigger high(er) volatility on the 1st Friday of the month...
Well if they are really good, then everybody will be making money from those non-farm payroll numbers.
They're not actually bad at estimating the number. The NFP number itself is an estimate based on a sample so it can just fluctuate quite dramatically due to sampling error. From the BLS website (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm): For example, the confidence interval for the monthly change in total nonfarm employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 115,000. Suppose the estimate of nonfarm employment increases by 50,000 from one month to the next. The 90-percent confidence interval on the monthly change would range from -65,000 to +165,000 (50,000 +/- 115,000). These figures do not mean that the sample results are off by these magnitudes, but rather that there is about a 90-percent chance that the true over-the-month change lies within this interval. Since this range includes values of less than zero, we could not say with confidence that nonfarm employment had, in fact, increased that month. If, however, the reported nonfarm employment rise was 250,000, then all of the values within the 90- percent confidence interval would be greater than zero. In this case, it is likely (at least a 90-percent chance) that nonfarm employment had, in fact, risen that month. At an unemployment rate of around 6.0 percent, the 90-percent confidence interval for the monthly change in unemployment as measured by the household survey is about +/- 300,000, and for the monthly change in the unemployment rate it is about +/- 0.2 percentage point.
Do you know how long the intervals are in which "they" revise this information after initial release? Thanks for the help everyone.