Spurious seasonal patterns and excess smoothness in the BLS local area unemployment

摘要: State level unemployment statistics are some of the most important and widely used data sources for local analysts public officials to gauge health their state’s economy. We find statistically significant seasonal patterns in state seasonally adjusted Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) released by U.S. Bureau Labor (BLS). that pro-rata factors benchmarking process can invoke spurious this data. also Henderson 13 filter BLS smooth may reduce monthly volatility too much sense aggregated is smoother than independently estimated national To these problems, we suggest use when regions totals.