Seasonally, You're Fired
You have to love the media and it's spin on the jobless claims numbers:
In the week ending Nov. 21, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 466,000, a decrease of 35,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 501,000. The 4-week moving average was 496,500, a decrease of 16,500 from the previous week's revised average of 513,000.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.1 percent for the week ending Nov. 14, a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate of 4.3 percent.
The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Nov. 14 was 5,423,000, a decrease of 190,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 5,613,000. The 4-week moving average was 5,613,750, a decrease of 98,500 from the preceding week's revised average of 5,712,250.
That's good, right? A decrease of 35,000 claims. The first-blush look would be "as expected, holiday hiring of temporary help."
Wait a second...
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 543,926 in the week ending Nov. 21, an increase of 68,080 from the previous week. There were 609,138 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.
What?
So you're going to tell me that seasonal adjustments removed 100,000 claims from the raw numbers for this week, or roughly 18% of the total claims?
An 18% seasonal adjustment?!
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