by Calculated Risk on 6/05/2020 03:39:00 PM

There will be some weird seasonal adjustments this year!

Every year, state and local governments let about 2 million teachers go in late Spring, and then hire them back at the end of Summer.

Since this happens every year, the BLS adjusts for this seasonal pattern in the monthly employment report.

However, in 2020, state and local governments let almost 1.2 million teachers go in March, April and May, Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA). On a seasonally adjusted basis, this was just over 1 million teaching jobs lost (State governments usually start letting teachers go in May, so some of the NSA job losses were expected).

What this means is that instead of letting close to 2 million teachers go in late Spring (NSA), state and local governments will only let go less than 1 million teachers.

This creates a weird seasonal adjustment problem.  By the end of July, the normal number of teachers (around 2 million) will probably have been let go.

Since the BLS has already reported over 1 million teaching jobs lost seasonally adjusted (SA), the seasonally adjusted number from the BLS will have to show something like an increase of 1 million teacher jobs in June and July!

State and local governments will not hire 1 million teachers in June and July, but the BLS seasonally adjusted report will show those hires to make the numbers balance out.  Just something to remember over the next two months.