Financial Associated Press, April 21 (Editor Zhao Hao) this Thursday (April 18), the U.S. Department of Labor announcedTopgameblockchainIn the week ended April 13, the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits for the first time after a quarterly adjustment was 212000, not much different from market expectations.

Normally, the initial application report does not attract as much attention as non-farm data, job openings and other data, but analysts quickly found something wrong, that is, the figure recorded 212000 in five of the last six weeks. the only week that changed was March 30, at 222000.

Given that the total number of people employed in the United States is as high as 160 million, it is extremely unusual for the number of first-time applicants to remain virtually unchanged for six consecutive weeks, especially when the figures for five weeks are exactly the same. It also attracted the attention of some people on Wall Street.

Jim Bianco, a market veteran and director of Bianco Research, wrote on social media, "how is this statistically possible?" Unemployment insurance is a national program, 50 states have different sites to submit data, and weather, seasons, holidays and economic fluctuations all affect weekly figures. "

At the bottom of Bianco's post, some people thought that "numbers are made up", while others wrote "Someone's cooking the books."-a phrase that refers to fraudulent operations in financial statements or records, usually to hide financial flows or other misconduct.

In response, a spokesman for the Ministry of Labor said that although this phenomenon is relatively rare, it should not be regarded as abnormal. He explained that this set of data reflects very little fluctuation in the number of first-time applicants during this period, and that the seasonality pattern in the original data has been eliminated because it is a "quarterly adjustment" figure.

Seasonal adjustment is a technique used to eliminate periodic fluctuations in data caused by seasonal changes in order to analyze long-term trends more accurately. And the non-quarterly data for the past six weeks have indeed fluctuated a lot, with 202 respectively.Topgameblockchain, 722, 191772, 193921, 197349, 215265 and 208509

Labor Department officials also pointed out that, in fact, they announced new seasonal factors about initial claims a month ago. "after using the new seasonally adjusted factors, the number of first-time jobless claims has been at a fairly stable level, especially since the beginning of February 2024."