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While we were away over the Christmas break The Cairns Post ran a piece (see below) highlighting the differences between our own Conus Trend labour force data for the regions and the Trend data provided by Rick Carr from Herron Todd White.
In actual fact Rick’s data and ours haven’t been that much at odds. The recent high levels of volatility seen in the ABS data (and the self-confessed problems they have had with their seasonal-adjustment process) have made both of our Trend analysis difficult, and appear to have caused some divergence recently. Nevertheless for the Nov data in Cairns our two series varied by only 900 jobs when considering the level of employment. As the article notes, Rick had 107,000 employed in Nov; our own series had 106,100 The apparent wide discrepancy in the Trend unemployment rate may well settle down following revisions as we see the next few months’ data from the ABS.
Today will see the release of the Dec regional jobs data (10:30am Queensland time) when we shall update our Conus Trend series. So far as I can tell Rick doesn’t publish his revisions to the HTW Trend data so we shall have to wait until the end of the month for his Cairns Watch publication graph before we can see if our two series have once again more closely aligned.
Thanks to Mark Beath at Loose Change who spotted the piece in the paper, saved it and sent it on to us when we got home.
We are proud to have CBC Staff Selection as supporters of the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend Employment and Jobseeker data series