Real-time survey to provide timelier labor market data in era of COVID-19

Employment data needs to be accurate and up-to-date, but most traditional economic statistics, such as those for the labor market, fall short because they are reported with an extremely slow response.

Employment data needs to be accurate and up-to-date, but most traditional economic statistics, such as those for the labor market, fall short because they are reported with an extremely slow response. Associate Professor of Economics Alex Bick and Assistant Professor of Economics Adam Blandin of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business developed a real-time population survey to give timely and accurate labor market information.

In this story published May 15, 2020, on the Reserve Bank of Dallas website:

To help reduce the information gap, we introduce the Real-Time Population Survey (RPS), an online survey of adults that are representative of the U.S. population along with several key characteristics. The central goal of the RPS is to document labor market trends in real-time and at a higher frequency than official statistics.