http://economywatch.msnbc.msn.com/_n...ood-to-be-true
Employment data may be too good to be true
By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer
At first glance, the U.S. job market seems to be moving in the right direction, although at a crawl. When you take a closer look, some of the data showing improving conditions for job-seekers may be too good to be true.
and further down:
Some suspect the government's formulas for smoothing out seasonal factors may be inadvertently inflating the numbers. Gallup chief economist Dennis Jacobe figures that, without those seasonal adjustments, the jobless rate has actually been rising for the past three months, hitting 9.1 percent in January.
Seasonal adjustment is a common practice used to analyze economic data because filtering out the impact of seasonal forces usually gives a better assessment of underlying trends. But, for reasons economists are still debating, this winter's seasonal adjustments may have thrown the numbers out of whack
"We think that the improvement over the last few months dramatically overstates the underlying improvement," said Goldman Sachs economist Andrew Tilton. "You will not see that rate of improvement going forward."
Goldman Sachs expects the jobless rate to end the year at 8.2 percent, barely below January's reading of 8.3 percent. That view is shared by economists at the Federal Reserve, whose chairman, Ben Bernanke, has said central bankers don't expect further big drops in the jobless rate.