The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. We are moving in the wrong direction again. New claims rose to 558,000, which was above the Bloomberg consensus range of 535K to 550K. From the report:
In the week ending Aug. 8, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 558,000, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 554,000. The 4-week moving average was 565,000, an increase of 8,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 556,500.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.7 percent for the week ending Aug. 1, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week’s revised rate of 4.8 percent.
The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Aug. 1 was 6,202,000, a decrease of 141,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,343,000. The 4-week moving average was 6,259,250, a decrease of 27,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 6,287,000.
The revision on last week’s new claims data was also +4,000. This is still a fairly small move up. There’s something else there that should jump out at everyone, but the seasonally adjusted number isn’t the place to analyze it. So, let’s look at the unadjusted numbers:
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 479,824 in the week ending Aug. 8, an increase of 13,129 from the previous week. There were 373,858 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.4 percent during the week ending Aug. 1, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,860,918, a decrease of 158,904 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.4 percent and the volume was 3,199,339.
The number of people claiming UI benefits decreased 158,904. A large chunk of this is not caused by rehiring, but by the benefits expiring. The number of people with expiring benefits is going to get worse (500,000 by the end of September).
Take a look at the good / bad lists, which reinforce last week’s good news:
The good list (-1000 or more): CA, MI, TN, FL, GA, IL, SC, OH, PR, IN, WI, TX, PA
The bad list (+1000 or more): empty
California steals the ring this week with -7,258. Just like last week, there is broad industry representation in the comments column.
This week’s bottom line: The absolute numbers are still high and edging higher, but expiring benefits should be dominating any unemployment discussion.
