Unemployment Insurance Claims
Last week the number of unemployment insurance claims dropped--but not by quite as much as the seasonal adjustment factor was expecting. So reported seasonally-adjusted claims rose by 7000.
Last year over the next three weeks--the last weeks of the year--weekly claims rose by more than 300,000, but because the seasonal adjustment factor was expecting them to rise by more than 400,000 the seasonally-adjusted numbers claimed that the economy was getting better, or at least getting worse more slowly. It was misleading.
Ask me in February about the real state of the labor market. I won't have much of a clue until then...