Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[TJ Parker]

its amazing how much you have to dig to find the actual numbers. i didn't even see the word "seasonal adjustment" in the WSJ report, and had to follow a link to numbers presumably unmassaged by the ministry of labor statistics:

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending Nov. 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 364,000, a decrease of 17,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 381,000. The 4-week moving average was 385,750, a decrease of 11,250 from the previous week's revised average of 397,000.

[...]

UNADJUSTED DATA

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 431,641 in the week ending Nov. 23, an increase of 58,985 from the previous week. There were 438,820 initial claims in the comparable week in 2001.

[...]

http://online.wsj.com/documents/bbjobs.htm

i don't quite understand why a "seasonal" winter adjustment (presumably to smooth out the numbers to better approximate 1/52 of a yearly rate?) should be so huge in winter ... isn't there more hiring going into xmas?