The party is on pause until further notice. That was the sentiment from this week’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report. New unemployment claims came in at 409k. The Bloomberg consensus range was 400k to 415k, so this number was largely expected. Last week’s number was revised up 3k. From the report:

In the week ending Jan. 1, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 409,000, an increase of 18,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 391,000. The 4-week moving average was 410,750, a decrease of 3,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 414,250.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.3 percent for the week ending Dec. 25, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.3 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Dec. 25 was 4,103,000, a decrease of 47,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,150,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,122,500, a decrease of 2,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 4,125,250.

We will stick by our rule of thumb and wait three weeks before declaring the party truly over, but this is certainly not good news. The real bloodbath is in the unadjusted numbers. This time of year is always busy for state unemployment offices:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 577,279 in the week ending Jan. 1, an increase of 52,038 from the previous week. There were 645,446 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.5 percent during the week ending Dec. 25, an increase of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,390,661, an increase of 273,882 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 4.2 percent and the volume was 5,484,997.

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending Dec. 18 was 8,765,952.

It’s important to remember that unadjusted data corresponds to actual people, and the new year greets our stubbornly high unemployed numbers with a bit of gloom. In prior years, the retail hiring surge for the holidays had a significant number of people looking for extra cash. These last couple years have a huge number of people looking for any cash. The end of temporary employment is quite different emotionally when families need the money to get by.

The good / bad lists actually look a little better than I anticipated. Next week’s list will have a net 52k in the bad list, so expect some impressive showings.

The good list (-1000 or more): FL, TX, GA, OK, IL, AZ

The bad list (+1000 or more): KS, RI, ID, NJ, MI, PA, AR, TN, MO, NY, KY, IA, MA, IN, NC, WI, CA

CA (the worst) was +15,972 vs FL (the best) at -4,956. Transportation made a significant showing in the bad list. From the big 4, construction, service, and manufacturing made a big showing. Trade only appeared twice.

In other news, there’s very little other news. The Tier V benefits bill is dead, and it will take more than a month for problems to show. The unemployment rate will likely creep down in the immediate future, which will mask the true problem. This will probably put on hold some of the benefits-are-expiring-and-millions-will-suffer human interest stories. People are less likely to be sympathetic with improving headline numbers. Expect such stories to come flooding back after the pause, though. Barring a large change in the labor market, the longer the pause, the greater the numbers of expirees, and the more stories you’ll see.

This was a disappointing report, even if it was largely expected. Any number above 400k is an unwelcome number, and rising numbers are doubly disappointing. However, this could be temporary, and patience is required. All eyes are on tomorrow’s employment situation report. 140k job additions are expected. Despite ADP’s blowout numbers, nobody seems willing to raise their expectations for this report.