Making sense of a living in a “seasonally adjusted” world

With­out a doubt many peo­ple have heard news reports over the past few years where some eco­nomic ana­lyst pro­claims that the econ­omy has finally taken a turn for the bet­ter and people’s lives are improv­ing. After hear­ing the opin­ion of this talk­ing head, many may be left think­ing one of two things. Is the per­son who is offer­ing this opin­ion so totally out of touch with real­ity that they haven’t got the slight­est clue how peo­ple are con­tin­u­ing to suf­fer in our lethar­gic econ­omy? Or, alter­na­tively, some may ask them­selves — par­tic­u­larly if these good-news reports seem to con­tinue week after week — if their lot in life is so lack­ing and their efforts so under­val­ued in the mar­ket­place that they are falling behind while every­one else is finally recovering?