Wisconsin’s Current Employment Statistics (CES) Benchmark –
2011
The CES program is a high volume, quick turnaround survey of employment and wages. CES data are among the most timely, visible, and widely-used economic indicators available at the national, state, and metropolitan area levels. The monthly estimates are revised annually in a process referred to as Benchmarking.
The user of CES data needs to be aware of revisions made annually to the reported monthly estimates in the Benchmarking process. They are:
- Benchmarking (affects all data from April 2010 to June 2011)
Every year, the monthly estimates of employment and wages are adjusted (benchmarked)
to reflect known values reported by all employers subject to Unemployment Insurance (UI)
taxes as reported through the first quarter of the benchmark year. In the current 2011
benchmark, the employment and wages data estimates from October 2010 to June 2011 were
replaced with UI reported values, providing information on all non-farm employment.
Employees not covered by UI were also re-estimated. These benchmarked data provide the
basis to recalculate (re-estimate) the previous published estimates for July 2011 to
December 2011. Monthly preliminary and final estimates in future months are based on these
benchmarked data, beginning with the January 2012 estimates.
The published Total Non-farm employment for March 2011 was 2,761,300 as reported in April 2011.
The revised value for March of 2011 is 2,754,500, a downward revision of 0.25%.
- Re-estimation (affects all data from July 2011 to December 2011)
New benchmarked levels derived from complete QCEW data through June 2011 require
re-estimation of July through December, 2011. These re-estimated months utilized
the same sample used from the original estimates, but with new benchmarked levels.
- Re-computation of Seasonal Adjustment factors (affects all seasonally adjusted data
January 2001 to present)
Seasonal adjustment factors are reviewed annually. All series factors remained unchanged
from the prior year.
More information on CES benchmarking is available at:
http://www.bls.gov/web/cesbmart.htm
