This week’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report reminds us that the trend for initial claims is down. After a brief bump up, the downtrend has reasserted itself. Initial claims dropped to 452,000. Last week’s number was unrevised. This was at the low end of the Bloomberg consensus range of 450k to 475k. From the report:

In the week ending Dec. 19, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 452,000, a decrease of 28,000 from the previous week’s unrevised figure of 480,000. The 4-week moving average was 465,250, a decrease of 2,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 468,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.9 percent for the week ending Dec. 12, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.9 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Dec. 12 was 5,076,000, a decrease of 127,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 5,203,000. The 4-week moving average was 5,233,000, a decrease of 90,000 from the preceding week’s revised average of 5,323,000.

As anyone might suspect, there is a very large seasonal component to employment around the holidays. And while the trend might be down, it is still worth looking at the unadjusted numbers. They moved in the wrong direction:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 561,902 in the week ending Dec. 19, an increase of 6,492 from the previous week. There were 719,615 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.1 percent during the week ending Dec. 12, an increase of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,385,774, an increase of 193,030 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 3.4 percent and the volume was 4,594,820.

While the unadjusted numbers increased, it is still worth noting that they represent a more stable employment environment compared to last year. Yes, that’s setting the bar a little low, but stability is an important step in the right direction. There’s some hope that the unadjusted initial claims number will be under 500k by the end of January. The beginning of January will be terrible, but that’s to be expected.

The good / bad lists look like a mirror image of last week. That’s uplifting.

The good list (-1000 or more): NC, PA, NY, GA, WI, CA, FL, TX, MI, WA, MN, TN, AL, VA, SC, AR, OH, MO

The bad list (+1000 or more): LA, PR

PR (the worst) was +1,260 vs NC (the best) at -14,374. North Carolina through California all had improvements greater than 10,000. That’s a welcome sign, and one of the strongest good lists we’ve had. Just another plus. Nearly every major industry was represented in the good list, with no comments for the bad list.

Good news for those collecting extended unemployment benefits: A fixed version was passed into law, attached to the defense spending bill (not attached to the jobs bill). This was probably the easiest way to avoid debate, which would have threatened passage by the January 1 deadline. This means that there will be no lapse in benefits for the approximately three million unemployed that would have been left out in the (literal and figurative) cold under the broken version of the law. This brings the “Hey, there’s still no jobs” issue back to the forefront.

There was quite a few positives and very few negatives in this week’s report. Our social welfare programs have avoided a spectacular collapse. Tomorrow is Christmas. I hope you and yours are happy and safe this holiday weekend.