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A tale of 2 employment surveys, at a glance

Published: May 3, 2013 Comment on this article

Unlike the payroll survey, the household survey captures farm workers, the self-employed and people who work for new companies. It also does a better job of capturing hiring by small businesses.

But the household survey is more volatile from month to month. The Labor Department surveys just 60,000 households, a small fraction of the more than 100 million U.S. households.

By contrast, the payroll survey seeks information from 145,000 companies and government agencies — and they employ roughly one-third of non-farm employees. The employers send forms to the Labor Department or fill out online surveys noting how many people they employ. They also provide wages, hours worked and other details.

Most Americans focus more on the unemployment rate, which comes from the household survey. But economists generally prefer the jobs figure from the payroll survey.

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