The 405 Club

The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. Initial claims dropped to 545K, which was below the Bloomberg consensus range (550K to 590K). Last week’s number was revised up 7,000 to 557K. From the report:

In the week ending Sept. 12, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 545,000, a decrease of 12,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 557,000. The 4-week moving average was 563,000, a decrease of 8,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 571,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.7 percent for the week ending Sept. 5, 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 Sept. 5 was 6,230,000, an increase of 129,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,101,000. The 4-week moving average was 6,180,250, a decrease of 5,500 from the preceding week’s revised average of 6,185,750.

The seasonally adjusted numbers need to come down below 500K before this stabilization is complete. I’d like to see it cross the 400K barrier, but I also hope the jobs recovery starts before then (which will be reflected in the monthly numbers, the labor pool, and continuing claims, not initial claims).

As usual, those that are interested in data trends should look at the above numbers, but those interested in the actual number of new jobless should take a look at the unadjusted numbers. This week, the unadjusted numbers look significantly better than the adjusted numbers:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 407,869 in the week ending Sept. 12, a decrease of 58,429 from the previous week. There were 382,249 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.0 percent during the week ending Sept. 5, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,270,688, a decrease of 165,485 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.3 percent and the volume was 3,040,859.

Even though it is mostly seasonal, it is great to see the unadjusted numbers move down. I don’t think the decrease in continuing claims is due to an uptick in hiring though (remember, 500,000 people were going to have their extended benefits expire by the end of September).

As for the good / bad lists, they continue to show low volatility:

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

The bad list (+1000 or more): SC, IL, NC, MA, PA, WA

WA (the worst) was +2,620 vs CA (the best) at -2,751. New York switched lists after taking the top spot on the bad list last week. Unfortunately, their new claims were still higher than from two weeks ago. Washington lists an increase in layoffs in the public administration industry, a rare comment. There continues to be no dominant trend in either list, but construction makes a fair showing in the bad list.

Back to expiring benefits. Both the House and Senate have bills to add another 13 week extension to benefits in the worst-hit states. The 13 week number is the same as the last extension effort. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a good estimate for when that would take effect, so there may be some substantial pain for the unemployed before more relief comes. In my political posts, I blast congress for their lack of fiscal discipline, but they show extreme fiscal discipline in the two programs that have the most direct relief for the unemployed: unemployment benefit extensions and SNAP (food stamps). I’m also surprised there hasn’t been more organized efforts from the unemployed to directly contact their representatives for benefits extensions.

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

-By crazynutjob.

Read all of crazynutjob’s unemployment report recaps here.