The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. Seasonally adjusted initial claims rose to 584,000, which was inside the Bloomberg consensus range of 565K to 600K. From the report:

In the week ending July 25, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 584,000, an increase of 25,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 559,000. The 4-week moving average was 559,000, a decrease of 8,250 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 July 18, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 4.7 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 18 was 6,197,000, a decrease of 54,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,251,000. The 4-week moving average was 6,416,250, a decrease of 131,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 6,548,000.

The news is slightly worse than indicated, as the previous week’s figure was revised up 4,000. Now that the large seasonal adjustment component due to auto manufacturing has passed, the initial claims data is again useful for analyzing trends. It’s still worthwhile to look at the unadjusted data, which provides some encouragement:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 507,464 in the week ending July 25, a decrease of 78,111 from the previous week. There were 376,123 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.6 percent during the week ending July 18, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 6,060,671, a decrease of 196,289 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.4 percent and the volume was 3,208,848.

It is good to know that there’s a seasonal component to the bad news. 78,111 fewer people making initial claims is not insignificant. The good / bad lists offer some more encouragement.

The good list (-1000 or more): NY, WI, MO, PA, OH, SC, AR, TN, KS, WA, IL, NJ, NC, TX, MA, KY, MN, AZ, AL, OR, CO, NH

The bad list (+1000 or more): FL, MI, CA

CA (the worst) was +4,290 vs NY (the best) at -22,052.

The lists are almost opposite the previous week’s lists. That’s two encouraging points against the negative point of the seasonally adjusted initial claims. The overall levels are still bad, but this wasn’t a terrible report.

Now for the bad news: As summer ends, so too will extended benefits for a number of people. The overall labor market is quite weak. This could put more than a million new people in the position of having no source of income and no job prospects. Many of these people are already ignored by the statistics in the weekly and monthly reports. I recognize that showing up in a statistic isn’t much consolation to the unemployed, but disappearing from official measurements altogether takes it to a different level.