A Comment on Seasonal Adjustments
What if I wrote that U.S. payroll employment increased by 383 thousand jobs in May 2009 following an increase of 259 thousand jobs in April 2009? Some readers would suspect CR had been captured by aliens or had visited crazytown. But, in fact, those numbers are exactly what the BLS reported as the actual change in payroll employment in April and May. The economy added 643 thousand jobs over those two months. However no one reports those numbers because there is a strong seasonal pattern to employment. Even in the best of years, 2.5 to 3.0 million people lose their jobs in January.
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