The past two months’ seasonally adjusted changes are being viewed as signs of a robust pick-up in growth. But in the medium to long term perspective that is needed with so much month-to-month noise, revision and adjustment – growth is slowing.
On a percentage basis, both year-over-year, and a rolling quarterly growth (annualized) are both lower in November 2015 than they were n 2014.
The rolling 3-month change is expressed as an annualized rate (for comparison with they year/year change) and is calculated of the consistent seasonal series re-calculated by ExpiStats, rather than the non-revised, published numbers.
Even on an absolute – not percentages – the picture is essentially the same:
Stripping out the seasonal adjustment process and looking at percentage changes we see below what the growth from May to November has been more or less the same in both 2014 and 2015. We plot the two series on different y-axes, effectively overlaying them, and showing their relative growth rates to be the same over this period.
October 2015’s monthly (seasonal adjusted) rise caused great excitement, but as can be seen in this chart, the November 2015 unadjusted change was less than that of the previous year’s (Note the gentler slope of the dark red line from October to November).
