Shadow Treasurer Matt Cowdrey has dropped another clanger, trying to claim that today’s record low unemployment rate of 3.2 per cent in South Australia was due to the “time of the year”.

When interviewed on FiveAA today, the Shadow Treasurer attributed the result to the festival season:

“It’s not unexpected. This is the time of year where we have a lot of casual work come into South Australia based on the time of year with our events schedule. We see this blip every year when we start to hit the February, March, April period.”

However, the figures released by the ABS today are already seasonally adjusted, with the ABS making it clear:

“Seasonal adjustment is the process by which calendar related effects are removed from the original series.”

Highlighting the adjustment is that the original data series showed there were 34,000 more people employed in February, but the seasonally adjusted data series recorded an increase of only 11,000, the figure that the 3.2 per cent unemployment rate is based on.

This is another basic mistake the Shadow Treasurer has made in his portfolio. During a previous media interview, the Member for Colton was exposed for being unaware of how fees and charges were set annually, despite the information being publicly available.

Quotes

Attributable to Stephen Mullighan

This is a shocking clanger from someone who claims to be the state’s next Treasurer.

It’s beyond belief that even the basic facts of economic statistics are completely foreign to the Liberal’s principal economic spokesperson.

The clangers are adding up – even if his comments don’t.