MOVE · DATA QUALITY AUDIT · NOTE 19

A national labor headline is not a destination verdict

BLS's July 2026 metro release is decomposed into higher, lower, and unchanged year-over-year unemployment-rate groups.

SOURCE SNAPSHOT

Start with provenance and source scope.

INPUT AND EVIDENCE LEDGER

Classify every field before using it.

FieldValueOrigin
Metro areas387BLS release universe
Lower than a year earlier241BLS
Higher than a year earlier128BLS
Unchanged18BLS

REPRODUCIBLE WORK

Run the quality-control chain.

CheckFormula or ruleResult
Coverage check241 + 128 + 18387; categories reconcile
Lower share241 ÷ 38762.3%
Higher share128 ÷ 38733.1%
Unchanged share18 ÷ 3874.7% after rounding

DECISION READING

The audit finding.

Most metros improved on this measure, but one-third worsened. MOVE should display the destination metro's own observation and date instead of translating the national majority into a claim about one user's job security.

HUMAN ACCOUNTABILITY + AI USE RECORD

The owner is accountable; the technical checks were AI-assisted.

The TOOOLBOX site owner authorized the publication scope and remains the correction contact. AI assistance was used for drafting, implementation, arithmetic recomputation, and source-link checks. This record does not claim line-by-line human fact-checking or licensed professional review.

Record ID
TB-MOVE-19-20260905
Owner role
TOOOLBOX site owner and developer
Technical check date
2026-09-05
Human fact-check
No separate human fact-check recorded
AI use
Drafting, code, arithmetic, and link checks
Correction channel
Public contact page
  1. Reconciled the three BLS categories to the 387-area total.
  2. Recomputed all percentages from the published counts.
  3. Removed language that could imply a forecast for a specific worker.

BOUNDARIES

What passed data checks still cannot prove.

  • The counts do not identify a user's occupation or employer risk.
  • Year-over-year direction is not a wage forecast.
  • A metro average can hide large local differences.

SENSITIVITY

Failure modes to retest.

  • Unemployment rate and payroll employment answer different questions.
  • Monthly estimates can be revised and can be noisy for smaller areas.
  • Occupation-specific prospects can diverge from the overall metro rate.

MORE MOVE DECISION NOTES

Test the result yourself.

This note preserves a dated calculation. Change the inputs in the live workspace, or compare another evidence pattern below. Live source availability and results can differ from the dated example.