Thursday 27 December 2012

Season’s Greetings for the unemployment figures

via The Work Founation News by Andrew Sissons

It’s Christmas time – and it turns out that the season has a big effect on today’s labour market statistics, but probably not in the way you expect.

Today’s headline number shows unemployment falling by 82,000 in 3 months, which looks like great news. But it isn’t all it seems. In fact, if you take away the seasonal adjustment factor that the ONS applies to its statistics, unemployment is much higher now than it was earlier this year.

Continue reading to get a useful explanation of seasonally adjusted figures.

With apologies – this got hidden in my drafts folder for some inexplicable reason!

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