The Payroll Employment Game

Sometimes a game makes everything clear.  The Payroll Employment Game is now available for your entertainment, education, and comment at this site: www.payrollemploymentgame.com.

Here is the background.

The big economic news for this week will be Friday’s report on the employment situation, highlighted by the payroll employment report.  There is always intense speculation about the pace of job growth.  The report has special significance because it is the first real data from the month just ended, and because employment growth is a fundamental aspect of economic growth.

At "A Dash" we have written about the problems in interpreting this report, provided an illustration of the measurement errors involved, and suggested some insight into how the Fed looks at the data.

Now we let readers simulate for themselves the perils of forecasting employment growth.