UNEMPLOYMENT STILL BAD.
-By Guest Blogger crazynutjob. Read all of crazynutjob’s unemployment report recaps [here].
The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report surprised some people this week with more jobless than expected. The major headlines did a decent job of backpedaling after last week’s unwarranted celebration. Bloomberg reports U.S. Jobless Claims Rise, Total Benefit Rolls Climb:
The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week and the total number receiving payments increased, indicating the labor market may take longer to stabilize.
Initial jobless claims rose by 15,000 to 627,000 in the week ended June 20, from a revised 612,000 the week before, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The number of people collecting unemployment insurance gained by 29,000 in the prior week, to 6.74 million.
Recent economic data shows some areas of the economy, such as housing and manufacturing, are seeing a smaller pace of decline, and the Federal Reserve said yesterday after a two-day meeting in Washington that the economy’s slump is “slowing.” Even so, companies have been loath to hire new employees, in part because they are waiting for sustained gains in demand.
I think Bloomberg gets the story right. Government and media reports can continue to claim that things are stabilizing, but nobody is going to start hiring until business picks up in a meaningful way. Also, leave it to me to put a further negative spin on bad news, but the previous week’s data was revised up by 4,000. The 4-week moving average for initial claims also increased by 500 to 617,250 (the prior week’s number was revised up 1,000 as a simple consequence of the other revision). As a reminder, last week’s report provided evidence that benefits are expiring for enough people that the total claims number isn’t a very useful statistic (it understates the problem more than usual).
The unadjusted numbers tell the same story. From the actual report:
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 566,586 in the week ending June 20, an increase of 8,548 from the previous week. There were 358,159 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.6 percent during the week ending June 13, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 6,098,083, an increase of 19,737 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.1 percent and the volume was 2,852,599.
Nothing particularly surprising there. Let’s look at the good / bad lists this week. The volatility from week to week continues.
The good list (-1000 or more): MI, NY, NC, TN, OH, SC, KY, IN, OR, WA, MS, TX, AR, MN
The bad list (+1000 or more): AZ, CA, PR, MO, PA, FL
FL (the worst) was +8,383 vs MI (the best) at -5,414.
It looks like a wave of auto and manufacturing layoffs has passed (MI, OH, and IN). Of course, this is a temporary reprieve. GM plans on eliminating between 10,000 and 16,000 jobs by August 1st as part of their bankruptcy plan [source: WSJ]. No other trends are evident. Construction, for example, is in both the good and bad list.
Be advised that next week will give us the weekly claims report on the same day as the monthly unemployment report. The monthly report is usually a Friday release. Look at it this way: we’ll get all the bad news out of the way on Thursday so that we can enjoy the 4th of July weekend.
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the405club reblogged this from crazynutjob and added:
-By Guest Blogger crazynutjob. Read all of crazynutjob’s unemployment report recaps [here].
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