Try looking it up...
When the employment figures come out the report always says "non-farm payroll". As I said try to easily get that figure - that qualifier - and figuring why it is phrased that way. I have a theory based on what I have read but it is probably wrong.
Just an observation and obviously my own as a private citizen and not as part of Prism..be clear on that...but the stats on this blog show that a lot of non-financial-trader types read this so here goes:1. It is a way to keep data constant...if we have always done it that way and we change in any way then historical data becomes irrelevant.
2. With that "qualifier" the non-farm could be read as "urban" where there are no farms (I've actually checked - there aren't a lot of farms in NYC) and this, to a minor degree slants things.
3. There really aren't a lot of farms anymore. If you take the link in the title (the title is actually a link by the way) but here it is anyway http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/demographics.html it is pretty interesting as real-deal farming numbers are pretty small and the "gentlemen farm" and a lot of others are just family operations that don't hire a lot of people. Point is, the "farm payroll" unemployment although probably highly seasonal and populated by a lot of low wage workers is pretty small. When I write "pretty" in anything I think of Larry David and Curb Your Entusiasm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_05qJTeNNI.
So there are probably a lot of good reasons to say "non-farm payroll" but it doesn't sinc up with the 6.8 million farms in operation 50+ years ago and the million or so farms currently - many of the very small -well I'm just not sure that this jobless stat isn't just a blip.