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Improved Estimates Of St. Louis Metro Employment, Howard Wall

Center for Applied Economics

Official employment data for the St. Louis metro area produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are often unreliable and usually misleading. A major reason for this problem is that the BLS does not make full use of the data at its disposal. To address this, the Institute for the Study of Economics and the Environment (ISEE) at Lindenwood University has developed an alternative employment measure that makes better use of available data. More specifically, the ISEE employment series for the St. Louis MSA undergo rolling benchmark revisions four times a year as data become available. This is in …