Monthly number of job losers in the U.S. April 2020/21

Seasonal adjustment is a statistical method for removing the seasonal component of a time series that is used when analyzing non-seasonal trends. It is normal to report un-adjusted data for current unemployment rates, as these reflect the actual current situation. Seasonally adjusted data may be used for the longer term comparison. Unlike the trend and cyclical components, seasonal components, theoretically, happen with similar magnitude during the same time period each year. The seasonal component of a series are often considered to be uninteresting in their own right and to cause the interpretation of a series to be ambiguous. By removing the seasonal component, it is easier to focus on other components.