Spinning and Unemployment

While many of the nations leaders may not be able to pull off a pair of hot pants quiet like Kylie. They certainly are equally able to say truthfully “I’m spinning around”. Now while all of you are groaning at that terrible pun and wondering why this post reminds you of the Sunday Independent consider the two headlines from the Fianna Fail and Labour today Increase in numbers on live register must end gov complacency (lab) and Minister Kitt Welcomes Fall in Seasonally Adjusted Live Register (FF).

Ok first things first what are the figures released. Unemployment is up by +5,887 and seasonally adjusted it is down 2,400. So what did the parties say about the figures. Surely numbers are numbers.

From the parties Labour Red, Fianna Fail Green

The increase of almost 6,000 in the actual numbers on the live register

The seasonally adjusted decrease of 2,400 in the Live Register

These figures are just one of a number of pointers suggesting that there may be troubled economic waters ahead.

Our unemployment rate of 4.4% remains one of the very lowest in the EU, and the outlook remains favourable for the period ahead”

I hope you saw that there that both parties used the same figures yet got different stories that suited each other. Not even Kylie could spin that well.

So what is the difference between and reason for seasonally adjusted figures. From the UK government statistics office

“Seasonal adjustment is a process by which changes that are due to seasonal or calendar influences are removed to produce a clearer picture of the underlying behaviour.”

So basically I guess what this is saying is that the seasonally adjusted figure is due to factors such as collage students who have just finished signing on the dole before starting work in September –October inflate the true figure or the fact that some people get summer jobs covering people going on holidays thus deflating the actually figure. These factors do need to be taken into account when looking at figures over a short time period as they give a truer look at the overall situation of what needs to be done with unemployment. Using the non seasonally adjusted figure is a bit like saying that this month is hotter then 6 months ago as proof of global warming. It’s not it’s proof its summer. For proof of global warming you would need to look at years of stats using the non seasonally adjusted figure.

So the seasonally adjusted figure is possibly more true of the actually unemployment trend then the raw figure. Labour address the seasonally adjusted figure like so.

While the seasonally adjusted figures for July show a small decrease

Now in fairness if you are acting like you consider 6000 large you can’t really say that 2400 is small. It is close to 40% of the figure. So Labour commit the great sin of manipulation? Well maybe but Fianna Fail neglect to mention that compare to this time last year the seasonally adjusted figures has increased by 200. Now that figure accounts for about 0.1% of the actual figure which suggests it is within the margin of error but it certainly is not going down.

As always the truth is in the numbers not the politicians.