Here's a detailed look at exactly how the government jiggers the numbers (in this case, the retail sales numbers). Basically they cleverly excluded a major source of bad news. For retail store sales, they exclude any data from stores that were open last year, but aren't open this year. But new store openings (zero sales last year, but sales this year) are positive news, so those numbers stay in.
Over the years, I've dug into government supplied data perhaps 10 times. Each and every time the same thing happened: I discovered that the government made themselves look better by excluding the bad news. The “pros” all know this, and it's openly discussed all the time – they just switch to some other source of data.
For example, one of the most notorious examples is the unemployment percentage (currently being reported as around 10%). This government-supplied number leaves out all the so-called “discouraged” workers – those who have given up looking for work. They're not unemployed? What kind of logic is that? When you include the “discouraged” workers, the national unemployment rate right now is around 18%...
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