The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. New claims fell to 550,000, which was at the low end of the Bloomberg consensus range of 550K to 600K. From the report:

In the week ending Aug. 1, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 550,000, a decrease of 38,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 588,000. The 4-week moving average was 555,250, a decrease of 4,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 560,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.7 percent for the week ending July 25, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 4.7 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 25 was 6,310,000, an increase of 69,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,241,000. The 4-week moving average was 6,278,750, a decrease of 148,500 from the preceding week’s revised average of 6,427,250.

This is a good move, and lends a slight bit of credibility to the idea that we will see a better monthly report tomorrow. The decrease of 38,000 overshadows the upward revision to last week’s number (by +4,000). The unadjusted statistics, those that correspond to actual people instead of trend data, tell the same story:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 463,062 in the week ending Aug. 1, a decrease of 48,296 from the previous week. There were 382,792 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.5 percent during the week ending July 25, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,987,728, a decrease of 116,319 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.4 percent and the volume was 3,166,763.

This is also welcome news. The numbers are still high, but this is the first report in a while that I’ve felt comfortable calling “Good News.” More objectively, though, I do not personally know of a company that isn’t running lean right now, so it would be somewhat surprising to see a big uptick in new claims without more headlines about business failures. But, there’s a difference between a decrease in new claims and an increase in hiring. I still don’t see an engine for jobs creation. On the optimistic side, I expect such an engine to be easier to see in hindsight, so the employment numbers will probably see a boost before there’s consensus on what creates the jobs. Unemployment benefits are quickly running out for a large number of people, but there was widespread coverage of the fact last weekend, which gives me a little room for optimism. Also on the optimistic side, the good / bad lists.

The good list (-1000 or more): NC, MI, FL, GA, AL, NY, PA, IN, VA, IL, KY, MO, NJ, WI, CT, KS, WA, CA, IA

The bad list (+1000 or more): empty

Congratulations to North Carolina (-9,809). That’s great news, and nearly every manufacturing-related industry appears in the positive comments section.

Bottom line: Absolute numbers are still quite high, but this was a good report.

-By Guest Blogger crazynutjob.

Read all of crazynutjob’s unemployment report recaps [here].