The snowstorm that closed down the Eastern Seaboard was not sufficient to delay the release of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report. Good thing, too, because there’s good news in this week’s report. Initial claims fell to 440,000 while last week’s figure was revised up 3,000. This hit the optimistic edge of the Bloomberg concensus range of 440k to 475k. From the report:

In the week ending Feb. 6, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 440,000, a decrease of 43,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 483,000. The 4-week moving average was 468,500, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 469,500.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.5 percent for the week ending Jan. 30, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.5 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Jan. 30 was 4,538,000, a decrease of 79,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,617,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,603,500, a decrease of 17,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 4,621,250.

I’m not terribly happy about the upward revisions to prior weeks. It is reflected in the 4-week moving average barely inching down. However, if you look at the graph of initial claims at the St. Louis Fed, this is looking like a V-shaped recovery in employment stability. This is not as good as a V-shaped recovery in employment, but getting below 400k will support jobs growth even in a terrible economy. Note that this isn’t quite an “all clear” signal. Reversals are the norm, but they are usually much smaller than the preceding peak.

The unadjusted numbers continue their move back toward the adjusted numbers. Remember, actual claims correspond to actual people (someday I will meet a seasonally adjusted person and be forced to stop issuing disclaimers):

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 504,661 in the week ending Feb. 6, a decrease of 28,640 from the previous week. There were 710,152 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.3 percent during the week ending Jan. 30, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,659,505, a decrease of 24,352 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 4.4 percent and the volume was 5,953,114.

Please note the year over year improvement to new claims. Things really are much more stable than a year ago. Unfortunately, we’re at a lower level of employment from a year ago. Because of the duration of this downturn, this is not adequately captured in the continuing claims numbers. This alone should provide some concern.

I do have a bit of a puzzle: what impact will the weather have on the unemployment insurance report? What impact will the weather have on monthly job figures? Will state unemployment workers stay home and build a backlog, improving figures one week only to make them worse the next? Will job seekers be forced to reschedule interviews, supporting the unemployment rate? This storm has significantly reduced travel in some of America’s biggest cities.

The good / bad lists are past the big calendar anomalies. Normal isn’t great.

The good list (-1000 or more): NJ, KS, CT, VA

The bad list (+1000 or more): IA, TX, FL, OH, CA, WI, MO, GA, NC, IL, PA

PA (the worst) was +10,495 vs NJ (the best) at -1,819. The big 4, construction, service, manufacturing, and trade, were well represented in the bad list. New Jersey credits both trade and service with fewer layoffs, so that provides some regional mitigation. We’re entering a new seasonal cycle, so this serves as a new baseline.

The final thing worth mentioning is that expiring COBRA benefits are starting to be discussed again. This article mentions that the Federal COBRA subsidy will not apply to workers laid off after February 28. With that bit of information, I think a new short-term concern dominates. The long term outlook is still dominated by the impossible-to-predict jobs growth engine.