We got two bits of economic revision from the official government sources yesterday, one of them good and one of them bad. The bad news was that the estimate of GDP for the second quarter slipped from the previous reading of 1.7 percent all the way down to 1.3 percent. The slippage was attributed to weaker consumer spending and reduced farm inventories, which were hit hard by the drought.
On the other hand, the employment numbers for the past year got revised upward. After carefully reviewing state unemployment rolls, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that an additional 386,000 jobs had been created between April 2011 and March 2012. The Labor Department reviews the state records once a year to check the accuracy of its already-released figures.
The lower job-creation numbers we've seen over the past couple of months remain, to this point, unchanged. Also unchanged is the official unemployment rate, which is derived using somewhat different methods. It remains at 8.1 percent.
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