As we learned during the summer and fall of 2021, both GDP and jobs numbers are subject to significant revision, both in subsequent months and then again the next year. From my perspective, had we known at the time about the eventual large upward revisions in last year’s employment data, we likely would have significantly accelerated our monetary policy actions.
Going forward, we have to consider the possibility of these kinds of revisions when making real-time judgments as policymakers, which includes looking at other kinds of indicators instead of relying too heavily on the data.