Benchmark
Here's a Better Way to Adjust for Extreme Weather in the Job Market
A new approach shows a different picture of U.S. payrolls when adjusted for variations from normal weather
Commuters exit the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's (MBTA) JFK/UMass station and head toward shuttle buses that carried them to their destinations on February 9, 2015, in Boston, Massachusetts.
Photographer: Kayana Szymczak/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
The weather matters for the U.S. job market, more than people realize. That's what two economists concluded in a paper proposing a way to more accurately track employment.
Unseasonable weather can raise or lower monthly payrolls by almost 200,000, according to estimates by Michael Boldin of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and Jonathan Wright, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and a former Fed economist. As recently as March, colder-than-normal temperatures cut employment by 36,000, they estimated.