Thursday’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report is out. This is an exercise in having memory greater than one week. From the report (emphasis mine):
In the week ending June 6, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 601,000, a decrease of 24,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 625,000. The 4-week moving average was 621,750, a decrease of 10,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 632,250.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 5.1 percent for the week ending May 30, unchanged from the prior week’s revised rate of 5.1 percent.
The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending May 30 was 6,816,000, an increase of 59,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,757,000. The 4-week moving average was 6,750,500, an increase of 57,250 from the preceding week’s revised average of 6,693,250.
Last week’s report:
In the week ending May 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 621,000, a decrease of 4,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 625,000. The 4-week moving average was 631,250, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 627,250
Last week’s decrease in new unemployment claims was revised to be flat (and last week had an upward revision on the previous data as well). Our improvements are being revised away. Having just said that, I don’t actually think that a change of 24,000 is going to be revised away. That’s a pretty substantial dip. Unfortunately, the continuing story seems to be that for every fewer layoff in our economy, there’s even fewer new jobs; the continuing claims crept up again (back into record territory).
I’m still a fan of checking the unadjusted claims, since those are the numbers that correspond to actual people. Back to this week’s report:
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 576,695 in the week ending June 6, an increase of 76,312 from the previous week. There were 373,046 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.6 percent during the week ending May 30, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 6,127,413, an increase of 93,810 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.1 percent and the volume was 2,828,892.
Woah! The swing between the unadjusted data and the adjusted data is 100,000 jobs. I think it’s safe to assume the summer season has started. This is an example of why it’s worth spending the extra minute to look at both the adjusted and unadjusted data. If we looked at just the adjusted data, we’d ignore the fact that 76,000 new people were just dumped on our strained benefit programs. If we looked at just the unadjusted data, we’d have to remember that such changes happen every summer (last year the total claims rose from 2,757,822 to 2,828,892).
The good/bad lists tell an interesting (happy) story:
The good list (-1000 or more): FL, IL, MI, CA, TX, NJ, KY, MA, IA, OK, OH, SC, MD
The bad list (+1000 or more): none
Florida is the clear winner at -6,655. That’s genuine good news. Now, if only there were new jobs to go with that. Remember, the auto dealership closings are still largely in the future. SCOTUS approved the Chrysler franchise closings, though there is a bill in congress to bailout the auto dealers (from a practical standpoint, it’s a little late, though).
