This week’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report brought no surprises. The claim is that this reflects making it past two weeks of administrative delays adding to the numbers. Of course, that means that the period before the bump, when the delays were adding to the backlog, was worse than reported. Smoothing the bump also makes this week look substantially less impressive. New claims came in at 456k while last week’s number was revised down 4k. New claims fell within the Bloomberg consensus range of 440k to 465k. From the report…

Read More

When I first saw the headline number, I thought “Someone tell me that this is a consequence of the weather and not a sign that the labor market is starting to crumble again.” Spoiler: it’s the seasonal adjustment. The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. Initial claims grew to 496,000 while last week’s figure was revised up 1,000. This was was actually inside the Bloomberg consensus range of 445k to 500k. From the report:

Read More

This week’s unemployment statistics are moving in the wrong direction, but with a possible silver lining. The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. Initial claims rose to 482,000. Last week’s number was revised up 2,000. This was above the Bloomberg consensus range of 435k to 450k. From the report:

In the week ending Jan. 16, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 482,000, an increase of 36,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 446,000. The 4-week moving average was 448,250, an increase of 7,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 441,250.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.5 percent for the week ending Jan. 9, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.5 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Jan. 9 was 4,599,000, a decrease of 18,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,617,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,750,500, a decrease of 109,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 4,860,250.

New claims are up and only about 1 in 3 unemployed people are able to collect unemployment benefits (worse if you use broader unemployment measures). Where was that silver lining? Bloomberg (sorry, no useful link) reported that the increase may be due to bottlenecks in processing, not new layoffs. If this is true, we should be setting up for about three weeks of declining initial claims. Unfortunately, it also means that the employment situation after Christmas was weaker than the seasonal adjustment process anticipated. Speaking of seasonal adjustments, the post-Christmas bump appears to have passed. There are significant improvements to the unadjusted numbers:

Read More

This week’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report brings some bad news, even on a seasonally adjusted basis. Initial claims rose to 444,000. Last week’s number was revised down 1,000. This was toward the high end of the Bloomberg consensus range of 400k to 450k. From the report:

In the week ending Jan. 9, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 444,000, an increase of 11,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 433,000. The 4-week moving average was 440,750, a decrease of 9,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 449,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.5 percent for the week ending Jan. 2, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.6 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Jan. 2 was 4,596,000, a decrease of 211,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,807,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,855,000, a decrease of 151,500 from the preceding week’s revised average of 5,006,500.

The trend data is rather stubborn, refusing to punch through 400k. I had previously held the view that an extended stay below 500k would also get us to the point where job creation actually starts to take hold. The weakness of December’s employment situation report, coupled with the anticipated upcoming revisions, leads me to reiterate my claim that the 400k line is important.

I warned previously that the seasonal adjustment was going to be big…

Read More