Seasonalized and deseasonalized measures adjust raw labor market data in different ways and can point in opposite directions. The seasonalized figure reported by Funcas shows a net drop of 11,000 unemployed people in October after accounting for expected seasonal swings, which are typically driven by patterns such as tourism cycles, school terms and holiday effects. In contrast, Funcas’s deseasonalized calculation, which aims to strip out regular seasonal patterns to reveal the underlying trend, estimates that unemployment actually rose by 22,101 people in October. At the same time, nominal Social Security registrations—the count of people affiliated to the Social Security system, often used as an indicator of payroll employment—grew by 46,000, and Funcas reports that the number of employed people increased by more than 140,000 in deseasonalized terms.
These differences underscore the role that methodological choices play in interpreting short-term labor market movements. Seasonal adjustment methods remove predictable, recurring fluctuations to make month-to-month comparisons more meaningful, while deseasonalized series attempt to present data in a form that highlights trend behavior without regular seasonal noise. When seasonal factors are substantial, as they often are in October with the end of summer activity and the beginning of the academic year, the two approaches can yield divergent signals about whether employment is strengthening or weakening.
The mixed signals from the October data also reflect the multiple ways employment can be measured. Social Security affiliation counts capture people covered by the social protection system, a metric closely tied to payroll jobs but not identical to unemployment registrations. Meanwhile, unemployment tallies typically come from labor office records and may include people actively seeking work who are not captured in payroll affiliation numbers. Funcas’s concurrent reporting of a sizeable increase in both Social Security affiliates and employed persons in deseasonalized terms suggests that headline job creation and the underlying unemployment trend did not move in lockstep during the month.
Analysts and policymakers often look at a range of indicators to form a fuller view of labor market health. A rise in Social Security affiliates and a large estimated increase in employed persons could indicate stronger engagement in the labor market or transitions from informal to formal employment. Conversely, an estimated deseasonalized rise in unemployment could point to growing joblessness not immediately reflected in affiliation data, or to timing mismatches between hiring and registration processes. The coexistence of these signals in October highlights the importance of following subsequent months’ data to determine whether any of the movements represent durable trends or temporary fluctuations.
Funcas presented these calculations in its Tuesday release, but the organization did not attach a single definitive narrative tying the seasonally adjusted fall in unemployment to the deseasonalized rise, beyond the numerical estimates. Observers will likely examine coming labor market releases, including subsequent unemployment and Social Security affiliation figures, to see whether the deseasonalized uptick in unemployment persists or whether the seasonalized decline marks the start of a more sustained improvement. In the near term, further data revisions and the release of complementary indicators such as labor force participation, hours worked and sectoral employment will be critical to resolve the apparent contradiction between the different measures for October.