jobless claims

Unemployment Claims Going in the Wrong Direction, 386,000 for Week of April 14th, 2012

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Initial weekly unemployment claims for the week ending on April 14th, 2012 were 386,000. The DOL reports this as a decrease of 2,000 from last week. The previous week was revised, from 380,000 to 388,000, an increase of 8,000. This is not good news for any recovery.

 

Initial weekly unemployment claims for September 18, 2010

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I hate initial weekly unemployment claims as an economic metric. It is a volatile number, subject to revisions, and has much statistical noise. That said, every single week, over and over, we are simply not seeing initial unemployment claims really drop. One has to wonder where all these people are coming from and has every single American at this point been fired from a job?

Initial weekly unemployment claims for August 14, 2010

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While initial weekly unemployment claims is a volatile number, subject to revisions, today's report is not good news. Initial weekly unemployment claims hit the magic number, 500,000. From the jobless claims report:

In the week ending Aug. 14, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 500,000, an increase of 12,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 488,000. The 4-week moving average was 482,500, an increase of 8,000 from the previous week's revised average of 474,500.

Below is the log of initial weekly unemployment claims, so one can get a better sense of the rise and fall of the numbers. A log helps remove some statistical noise. As we can see we have a step rise during the height of the recession, but then a leveling, not a similar decline and now this increase. This does not bode well for any sort of real recovery, which must include jobs.

 

initial claims aug 14 log

 

Below is a graph of initial weekly unemployment claims since November 2009. As you can see, we're literally back to 10 months ago.

 

initial claims aug 14 10 months

 

Weekly jobless claims fall 50,000 to 565k !!!

In stunning news, the BLS reported this morning that weekly jobless claims fell 50,000 to 565,000.

At their peak in April, weekly jobless claims were 659,000. This is almost 100,000 less claims than then. Note that in previous years the July 4 holiday has not affected these seasonally adjusted numbers, so appears not to be an issue.

Jobless claims "less bad" at 601,000

The BLS reported this morning that new jobless claims declined to 601,000 in the last week. That is the lowest reading since January. The 4 week moving average also declined to 637,000. According to the research reported by Prof. James Hamilton, this decline means that it is more likely than not that the recession will ultimately be deemed to have ended by the end of June.

Highest Jobless Claims Ever - New Record

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We have a new record on jobless claims:

New claims for unemployment benefits last week rose to a seasonally adjusted 652,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 644,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The total number of people claiming benefits jumped to 5.56 million, worse than economists' projections of 5.48 million, a ninth straight record and the highest total on records dating back to 1967.

and.....they had to revise last months 6.2% drop in GDP to 6.3%:

The dismal job news is one indicator of the overall economic pain Americans have endured early in the new year. The Commerce Department said Thursday that the economy shrank at a 6.3 percent annual pace at the end of 2008, the worst showing in a quarter-century, and a bit faster than the 6.2 percent drop estimated a month ago

1.25 MILLION Jobs Lost in 3 Months!

The November payrolls number just came out, blowing away almost all estimates at a loss of 533,000 jobs in one month! The services sector, which had been holding up until only a couple of months ago, shed over half of those jobs.

September was also revised down to 403,000 job losses, and October was revised to 320,000 job losses, for a total of job losses in just 3 months of 1,250,000 jobs!