A quick glance at the November employment report will give you the impression that the job market had suddenly taken flight. But look at the report more closely — as you should always do with all government statistics — and you'll see a problem.
And it's a problem that even the Labor Department was having trouble figuring out on Friday.
Wall Street, of course, loved the 321,000 new jobs that Labor said were created in November. And I'm sure people looking for a job were equally thrilled. Hell, I was giddy until I dug deeper into the figures.
As it turns out, last month's job growth was much more ordinary than the headline figure would have you believe — and it all lies with the seasonal adjustments Uncle Sam sprinkles onto all its data.
Government computer programs take into account seasonal abnormalities — like teaching jobs that stop in the summer and students who find jobs in the summer — so that the numbers don't jump all over the place.
Nothing wrong there.
The "not seasonally adjusted" data are the raw, unadulterated numbers.
But take a look at November 2013 jobs data and last month's data.
The raw, unadjusted data from Labor showed that 523,000 new jobs were created in November 2013. After that figure was seasonally adjusted, the growth was reduced to 203,000.
The raw, unadjusted numbers reported Friday showed 497,000 new jobs — or 26,000 less than last year's 523,000 raw number. Yet, this November's adjustment resulted in a headline figure of 321,000 — or a whopping 118,000 more than last year.
If the seasonal adjustments stayed consistent Friday's growth should have been less than last year's 203,000!
I called Labor and checked my figures. An economist there said they were still working on an explanation and that I wasn't the only one who asked. She said the problem might be because there wasn't a consistent number of weeks for the survey between this year and 2013.
"This was a big question last month too," she said, before referring me to Labor's PR people.
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