Updated README.md

Author: rickecon

README.md

@@ -13,9 +13,9 @@ The code in this repository makes up a package `usempl-plots` that can create mu
 
 The code in this part of the repository allows the user to create a normalized peak plot of U.S. nonfarm payroll employment (PAYEMS, seasonally adjusted) over the last 15 recessions, from the Great Depression (Aug. 1929 to Mar. 1933) to the most recent COVID-19 recession (Feb. 2020 to Apr. 2020). The dynamic version of this plot, which is updated regularly, is available to manipulate and explore at [https://www.oselab.org/gallery/usempl_npp](https://www.oselab.org/gallery/usempl_npp). The core maintainer of this repository is [Richard Evans](https://sites.google.com/site/rickecon/) ([@RickEcon](https://github.com/rickecon)).
 
-A normalized peak plot takes the maximum level of U.S. payroll employment at the beginning of a recession (within two months of the NBER declared beginning month) and normalizes the entire series so that the value at that peak equals 1.0. As such, the normalized time series shows the percent change from that peak. This is an intuitive way to compare the progression of nonfarm employment across recessions. The following figure is a screen shot of the normalized peak plot of the PAYEMS series from data downloaded on November 2, 2024 (most recent employment data is October 2022).
+A normalized peak plot takes the maximum level of U.S. payroll employment at the beginning of a recession (within two months of the NBER declared beginning month) and normalizes the entire series so that the value at that peak equals 1.0. As such, the normalized time series shows the percent change from that peak. This is an intuitive way to compare the progression of nonfarm employment across recessions. The following figure is a screen shot of the normalized peak plot of the PAYEMS series from data downloaded on January 15, 2025 (most recent employment data is December 2024).
 
-The monthly PAYEMS data series begins in January 1939. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published an annual survey of U.S. nonfarm employment which provided an annual average nonfarm payroll employment (not seasonally adjusted) for the years 1919-1938. I set the date values for annual average data to July 1 of that year. These data are taken from Table 1 on page 1 of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' "[Employment, Hours, and Earnings, United States, 1909-90, Volume I](https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/employment-earnings-united-states-189/employment-hours-earnings-united-states-1909-90-5435/content/pdf/emp_bmark_1909_1990_v1)," Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 2370 (Mar. 1991). In order to have monthly data, I imputed the missing months as a cubic spline that connected the annual data from July 1919 to July 1938 to the first two months of 1939 (January and February 1939). These annual data are stored as a .csv file in this repository ([`usempl_npp/data/usempl_anual_1919-1938.csv`](usempl_npp/data/usempl_anual_1919-1938.csv)). The imputation takes place in the [`usempl_npp_bokeh.py`](usempl_plots/usempl_npp_bokeh.py) file, and the final PAYEMS monthly data series from 1919-07 to 2024-10 with the imputed months is [`usempl_npp/data/usempl_2024-10-01.csv`](usempl_plots/data/usempl_2024-10-01.csv).
+The monthly PAYEMS data series begins in January 1939. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published an annual survey of U.S. nonfarm employment which provided an annual average nonfarm payroll employment (not seasonally adjusted) for the years 1919-1938. I set the date values for annual average data to July 1 of that year. These data are taken from Table 1 on page 1 of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' "[Employment, Hours, and Earnings, United States, 1909-90, Volume I](https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/employment-earnings-united-states-189/employment-hours-earnings-united-states-1909-90-5435/content/pdf/emp_bmark_1909_1990_v1)," Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 2370 (Mar. 1991). In order to have monthly data, I imputed the missing months as a cubic spline that connected the annual data from July 1919 to July 1938 to the first two months of 1939 (January and February 1939). These annual data are stored as a .csv file in this repository ([`usempl_npp/data/usempl_anual_1919-1938.csv`](usempl_npp/data/usempl_anual_1919-1938.csv)). The imputation takes place in the [`usempl_npp_bokeh.py`](usempl_plots/usempl_npp_bokeh.py) file, and the final PAYEMS monthly data series from 1919-07 to 2024-12 with the imputed months is [`usempl_npp/data/usempl_2024-12-01.csv`](usempl_plots/data/usempl_2024-12-01.csv).
 
 ![](readme_images/usempl_npp_full.png)