The Reconstruction

Somewhere in the World There Must Be Someone Who Understands the Unemployment Insurance Seasonal Adjustment Factor
But it sure ain’t me:

Looking at this time series, the seasonal adjustment does look a little crazy, but I promise– it’s not that bad.  Let’s go to the ten-year:

So, yes, that spike looks huge, but historically, it’s only really big. [...]

From Steve Levitt: “The other day I was walking through the halls of the University of Chicago economics department and heard a faculty member say that the right rule of thumb for government spending is that it is worth only 10 cents on the dollar because of inefficiency.”
I’m open to suggestions as to what rules [...]