U.S. auto sales showed their first overall increase since May, with a 1.2 percent gain over last October– if you don’t adjust for selling days. If you do, (as does BusinessWeek) then sales were down about 3 percent.
NewMexiKen passes this along mostly to point out the poor way statistics are reported in the MSM. It seems to me Business Week has it right, but I’d go further. Why can’t the comparison be based against a three-year or five-year October average? Aren’t year-to-year comparisons almost certain to be anomalies (like the number of sales days in one year vs. another)? And were car sales depressed a year ago or good?
Chrysler and Ford were each down around 9% last month from 2006.