The data releases that will drive the Economy desk

Most of what is known about the economy arrives on a calendar. Agencies announce in advance when each measurement will be released, and the numbers appear at the appointed time. The Economy desk will report from those releases themselves, starting with three publishers.

The national measures

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the Employment Situation report each month, usually on a Friday early in the month. It combines two surveys: a survey of households, which produces the unemployment rate, and a survey of employers, which counts the jobs on their payrolls by industry.¹ The bureau also publishes the Consumer Price Index each month, the most widely cited measure of inflation.

FloridaCommerce, the state’s commerce agency, publishes Florida’s monthly employment and unemployment figures, including estimates for metropolitan areas and counties, produced in cooperation with the bureau.²

The state’s own estimates

The Florida Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research coordinates the state’s consensus estimating conferences, where analysts for the Legislature and the governor agree on the forecasts of revenue, population and other measures that the budget is built on. Its site publishes the conference results and the data behind them.³

Each release has its own definitions and revisions; a monthly jobs figure, for example, is revised as more employer surveys come in. The desk will report the number an agency published, say which release it came from and note when a later release revises it.