I found “Guestimator’s” number analysis of yesterday’s Weekly Unemployment Report both interesting and very pertinent. He simply compared last year’s data for the same week to this year’s, and here is what he found:
“Last year's SA (seasonally adjusted) number for this week was 454,000, and NSA (non seasonally adjusted) was 556,000. That was SA adjustment of -18.3%.
This year's SA number for this week is 388,000, and NSA is 521,000. That is a SA adjustment of -25.5%.
While the NSA number is only 35,000 lower than this time last year, the SA number is 133,000 lower!
This doesn't make much sense.”
Indeed! That doesn’t make much sense and it shows that the actual numbers are lower than last year’s, but not by very much. Yet the reporting of the numbers is twisted to make it appear much lower due to the huge seasonal adjustments the Department of Labor is using.
And that pretty much sums up all the data I see. The dollar was devalued tremendously in 2010, thus data priced in dollars APPEARED to improve. The financial system is still just as bankrupt as ever, more and more fraud is being uncovered all the time yet we don’t prosecute anyone meaningful and we don’t change anything meaningful, we simply continue to use mark-to-fantasy accounting along with other types of accounting frauds to sweep the very real problems under the rug.
The rug is bulging. It’s going to be a very interesting 2011!