From this week's article by John Hussman
http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc040209.htm

S.A.P.s

A final note on the employment report, which showed a disappointing 112,000 non-farm jobs created in January. The Department of Labor had this interesting line in the report (italics added):

“Retail trade employment increased by over 76,000 over the month, after seasonal adjustment. The industry lost a total of 67,000 jobs in November and December. Weak holiday hiring in general merchandise, sporting goods and miscellaneous stores meant that there were fewer workers to lay off in January, resulting in seasonally adjusted employment gains for the month.”

That's almost Orwellian. Essentially, the seasonal adjustment adds jobs to the January figures to correct for normally heavy losses of temporary jobs after the holidays. But since there were so few of these jobs actually created during the holidays, those January layoffs didn't occur either. As a result, the seasonal adjustment results in a gain of 76,000 fictional jobs for January. These aren't real jobs because they aren't real people. Let's call them “Seasonally Adjusted People.”