By Matt Grossman

The Labor Department has halted a plan to cut the size of the monthly survey that determines the unemployment rate, delaying fears that budget problems would hurt the quality of US jobs statistics.

A spending measure passed by Congress last month gave the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which oversees the survey, permission to spend survey funds at a faster pace, the agency said this week. That will allow the BLS to continue surveying 60,000 households next year, ending an earlier plan to reduce the survey to 55,000 households, the agency said.

“We will continue to monitor the budget situation and keep the public informed of potential impacts on the CPS sample,” the BLS said, referring to the Current Population Survey.

Over the summer, BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer warned that costs were rising faster than the survey’s budget, necessitating cuts. She said the change would risk affecting the quality of the data, Bloomberg reported at the time, especially because a significantly lower proportion of households responded to the survey recently compared to before the pandemic.

Survey data are essential for determining the unemployment rate and the labor force participation rate. Economists were particularly concerned that narrowing the survey would obscure details about how minority groups are faring in the labor market.

Economists expect the October survey data, due out on Friday morning, to provide evidence of a stable labor market, with unemployment to hold steady at 4.1 percent.

Write to Matt Grossman at [email protected]

(End) Dow Jones Newswires

October 31, 2024 11:23 ET (15:23 GMT)

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