Well, last week I commented on new claims being flat. Turns out they were revised to being officially flat. In some ways that makes this week’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report even more impressive. Last week’s new claims number was revised up 6k to 478k. This week’s new claims number dropped to 451k. The Bloomberg consensus range was 465k to 480k, so this drop was better than expected. Please note that the overall number is still “bad,” being higher than the 400k level we associate with permanent jobs growth. From the report:

In the week ending Sept. 4, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 451,000, a decrease of 27,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 478,000. The 4-week moving average was 477,750, a decrease of 9,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 487,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.5 percent for the week ending Aug. 28, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.5 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Aug. 28 was 4,478,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,480,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,488,000, a decrease of 3,250 from the preceding week’s revised average of 4,491,250.

A significant chunk of the good news was based on changes to the seasonal adjustment. That’s not mitigation because the adjustments are positive right now (they add claims to the unadjusted number). Even ignoring the adjustment factors, new claims decreased:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 376,558 in the week ending Sept. 4, a decrease of 6,476 from the previous week. There were 466,277 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.2 percent during the week ending Aug. 28, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,052,572, a decrease of 73,554 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 4.1 percent and the volume was 5,437,541.

This is all good news that was needed. That spike up toward 500k would have lead to a much higher unemployment rate had it been sustained. However, we’re getting ever closer to hitting a full year at these levels. Labor market instability seems to be a constant.

The good / bad lists are both fairly small. This corresponds to last week’s unadjusted numbers.

The good list (-1000 or more): CA, IL

The bad list (+1000 or more): NV, FL, NY

NY (the worst) was +4,891 vs CA (the best) at -4,127. The big four, service, construction, trade, and manufacturing were all in the good list. Service and transportation made up the excuses in bad list.

In other news, other news remains difficult to find. I found it easier to find articles discussing the lack of unemployment extensions in Obama’s speech than it was to find articles on unemployment extensions. With the new claims number coming back down, the administration’s insistence that the last employment report was good news, and the reasonably good news in the labor turnover report, there may be no pressure to extend benefits. On the plus side, it’s just as difficult to find bad news on labor markets. We’re a long way from nightly reports of mass layoffs at companies.

This was a good report. While we are still at historically high levels of new claims, we’re also showing marked improvement after the last spike. 451k new claims should still count as less-bad news, but a drop of 27k in one week is quite welcome.

-Crazy nut job