Join NYC Office of Management and Budget’s Chief Economist, Dr. Rodney Chun, to learn about his office’s work, how he looks at and uses employment data, and how his office makes adjustments to account for seasonal employment.
The NYS Department of Labor’s monthly employment statistics are an important and closely watched data release, but they don’t account for seasonal variations in employment that are common in NYC. Many of our jobs vary by season: education employment slows in the late spring as schools and universities transition to their summer recess but picks up again in the fall. Hiring in the leisure and hospitality sector increases in the summer and late fall in response to tourism and travel flows. Construction jobs build in the late spring due to favorable weather, but typically drop during colder months.
To satisfy the need for high-frequency, accurate jobs data, the NYC Office of Management and Budget (OMB) performs an in-house seasonal adjustment each month and posts the results to Open Data for public use. This presentation discusses this process, including a primer on NYC employment data sources, and changes to the methodology to handle historic volatility during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Rodney Chun has held the position of Chief Economist at the NYC Office of Management and Budget (NYC OMB) for over 15 years as lead of the Economic Analysis and Forecasting group. The Economics group is responsible for the development and publication of the City’s economic forecast, which forms the foundation for estimates of tax revenues and other budget decisions. In addition, the unit monitors and assembles data used for tracking NYC’s economic activity, covering sectors such as employment and wages, real estate, tourism, and financial markets. Economics group staff also provide analysis and data for many City policy and financing discussions including economic development initiatives, housing policy, and the NYC bond underwriting process.