How interesting to hear Financial Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen tell us last week that the recent rise in the unemployment rate was only a seasonal adjustment and that unemployment will decline again later.
Let us examine this a little more closely through the clutter in the first chart. The red line tells you what the Government says the unemployment rate was on a seasonally adjusted basis including first-time job seekers and the green line what it was on something called the X-11 ARIMA method and do not ask me what that is. I haven't a clue.
The blue line tells you what it was without seasonal adjustment and one thing stands out immediately despite the clutter. It does not matter what line you take. All three say that the unemployment rate rose in February and last month. So don't tell us it was only seasonal adjustment, Mr Tsang.
Why did it rise? The second chart gives you a hint. The unemployment rate fell all last year because economic recovery gave us a higher growth rate in new jobs than it did in the labour force.
Recently, however, the growth rate of both has come down but with the growth rate of new jobs falling faster than the growth rate of the labour force. That was enough to push the unemployment rate up.
Which brings us to something else Mr Tsang said, namely that he had hoped to keep the unemployment rate below 3.5 per cent but overestimated his ability to do so.
