Comments on changes to regional employment data: benchmark revisions and NAICS conversion

This article discusses the impact of two major revisions to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment data made during 2003. The first change, the annual benchmark revisions, anchored data to the 2002 benchmark. These revisions show that job losses in New England over the past two years were more severe than previously reported. Meanwhile, for the first time since the implementation of the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system in 1939, all existing industry classifications were redefined as BLS introduced the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) to a range of employment-related data series.