Jobless rate soared to 14.7% in April as U.S. shed 20.5 million jobs amid coronavirus pandemic

[progree]

46. All's I "know" is from the summary and from the technical note ..

In the summary, they present the establishment survey nonfarm payroll numbers as THE job numbers. Here is how it begins:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- APRIL 2020

Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 20.5 million in April ((from the Establishment Survey --Progree)), and the unemployment rate rose to 14.7 percent ((from the Household Survey --Progree)), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The changes in these measures reflect the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it. Employment fell sharply in all major industry sectors, with particularly heavy job losses in leisure and hospitality.

This news release presents statistics from two monthly surveys. The household survey measures labor force status,
including unemployment, by demographic characteristics. The establishment survey measures nonfarm employment,
hours, and earnings by industry. For more information about the concepts and statistical methodology used in these
two surveys, see the Technical Note.

Note that it doesn't even mention the Household Survey's employment numbers until the middle of the 5th paragraph of the Household Survey section:

The labor force participation rate decreased by 2.5 percentage points over the month to 60.2 percent, the lowest
rate since January 1973 (when it was 60.0 percent). Total employment, as measured by the household survey, fell
by 22.4 million to 133.4 million. The employment-population ratio, at 51.3 percent, dropped by 8.7 percentage points
over the month. ...

From the technical note -- the Establishment Survey is a much larger survey with a much smaller 90% confidence interval:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm

The household survey provides information
on the labor force, employment, and unemployment that appears in the "A" tables,
marked HOUSEHOLD DATA. It is a sample survey of about 60,000 eligible households
conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The establishment survey provides information on employment, hours, and
earnings of employees on nonfarm payrolls; the data appear in the "B" tables,
marked ESTABLISHMENT DATA. BLS collects these data each month from the payroll
records of a sample of nonagricultural business establishments. Each month
the CES program surveys about 145,000 businesses and government agencies,
representing approximately 697,000 individual worksites, in order to provide
detailed industry data on employment, hours, and earnings of workers on nonfarm
payrolls. The active sample includes approximately one-third of all nonfarm
payroll jobs.

...

For example, the confidence interval for the monthly change in total nonfarm
employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 110,000.
Suppose the estimate of nonfarm employment increases by 50,000 from one month to
the next. The 90-percent confidence interval on the monthly change would range from
-60,000 to +160,000 (50,000 +/- 110,000). These figures do not mean that the sample
results are off by these magnitudes, but rather that there is about a 90-percent
chance that the true over-the-month change lies within this interval. Since this
range includes values of less than zero, we could not say with confidence that
nonfarm employment had, in fact, increased that month. If, however, the reported
nonfarm employment rise was 250,000, then all of the values within the 90-percent
confidence interval would be greater than zero. In this case, it is likely (at
least a 90-percent chance) that nonfarm employment had, in fact, risen that month.
At an unemployment rate of around 6.0 percent, the 90-percent confidence interval
for the monthly change in unemployment as measured by the household survey is
about +/- 300,000, and for the monthly change in the unemployment rate it is about
+/- 0.2 percentage point.

But the household survey collects a lot of labor force statistics that aren't in the establishment survey, such as the specific status of people including the jobless. The establishments wouldn't have information on the jobless. The technical note goes into that too.

Aside -- error found:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

(NOTE: On May 8, 2020, BLS discovered errors in national estimates for seasonally adjusted all
employees in professional and technical services, professional and business services, private
service- providing, service-providing, total private, and total nonfarm. The corrected total
nonfarm estimate is approximately 37,000 lower than initially reported. Estimates in the LABSTAT
database have been corrected for February, March and April 2020. BLS will make corrections to other
release products next week.)