A better indicator is the monthly change in overall employment.
He compares the most recent monthly change in consensus earnings estimates with the average monthly change over five years.
So, the monthly change in employment in the US, excluding the farming sector was +236,000.
But that's just an average: a graph of monthly changes looks like an electrocardiogram.
The menstrual cycle, with its hormonal ups and downs, also creates monthly changes in a woman's immune system.
The chart below shows the monthly change in jobs held by men and women over the last five years.
The jobs numbers are derived from a survey of employers, who report monthly changes in their payrolls.
They told me that the seasonal adjustments are based on normal monthly changes in the dollar volume of gasoline station sales.
Halifax's index has been the most volatile of the major price trackers in 2015, showing monthly changes in the market varying between falls of up to 0.4% and a rise of 2.7%.
Consumer prices in São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, rose only 0.25percentt in December, the smallest monthly change since May, as high interest rates and a strong dollar continued to keep a lid on spending through the holidays.
