A long Commissioner's Statement attached....>

US DATA: A long Commissioner's Statement attached to the Payrolls release,

potentially addressing some of the undercounting of the unemployed (unemp rate

possibly around 3.0pp underreported). Full text here:

- "There continued to be a large number of workers who were classified as

employed but absent from work for the entire reference week. As in March and

April, special instructions sent to household survey interviewers called for

employed people absent from work due to coronavirus-related business closures to

be classified as unemployed on temporary layoff. However, not all such workers

were so classified in May, despite additional training given to household survey

interviewers. BLS and the Census Bureau continue to investigate this issue, and

we're taking additional steps to address the problem...If the workers who were

recorded as employed but absent from work due to "other reasons" (over and above

the number absent or other reasons in a typical May) had been classified as

unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been

about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted

basis)."