The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. Initial claims held steady at 570K, which was in the Bloomberg consensus range (555K to 575K). Last week’s number was revised up 4,000 to 574K, so the report calls it a decrease. From the report:

In the week ending Aug. 29, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 570,000, a decrease of 4,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 574,000. The 4-week moving average was 571,250, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 567,250.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.7 percent for the week ending Aug. 22, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 4.6 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Aug. 22 was 6,234,000, an increase of 92,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,142,000. The 4-week moving average was 6,216,750, a decrease of 27,250 from the preceding week’s revised average of 6,244,000.

It’s odd that continuing claims was able to increase by such a large amount. Either hiring is falling off faster than benefits are expiring, or there’s a breather in the expiring benefits number. The latter is obviously better than the former. If you are looking for some good news, there’s some in the unadjusted numbers. There’s a seasonal decrease in layoffs, but most of it comes from revising last week’s number up from 453,936:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 452,271 in the week ending Aug. 29, a decrease of 5,002 from the previous week. There were 358,730 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.2 percent during the week ending Aug. 22, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,610,719, a decrease of 71,086 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.3 percent and the volume was 3,097,585.

Any decrease in new claims is welcome, seasonal or otherwise. As for the good / bad lists, they hold a few key swaps from last week.

The good list (-1000 or more): MI, FL, PA, NJ, AL, IA, WA

The bad list (+1000 or more): NH, OH, CA

CA (the worst) was +8,632 vs MI (the best) at -2,968. Automobile, construction, trade, and service industries are found in the comments column of both lists, so there’s not a lot that can be said about new trends.

Bloomberg reported some good news in their rather depressing take on this report (emphasis mine):

General Motors Co. called back 1,350 union workers, its biggest one-time increase in jobs since 2006, partly in response to demand from the government’s “cash for clunkers” program.

This week’s bottom line: The numbers are holding steady, so expiring benefits should still be dominating any unemployment discussion.

-By Guest Blogger crazynutjob.

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