I may have jinxed us when I said “Slow and steady wins the race.” This week’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. The slow decline is now even slower. New claims dropped to 439k (scroll down for the bad news, though). Last week’s number was revised up 3,000 to 445k. This was safely inside the Bloomberg consensus range of 425k to 445k. From the report:

In the week ending March 27, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 439,000, a decrease of 6,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 445,000. The 4-week moving average was 447,250, a decrease of 6,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 454,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.6 percent for the week ending March 20, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.6 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending March 20 was 4,662,000, a decrease of 6,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,668,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,679,500, a decrease of 12,500 from the preceding week’s revised average of 4,692,000.

This isn’t bad, but it’s nothing to celebrate. The unadjusted numbers dance right along the 400k mark. They taunt us.

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 404,869 in the week ending March 27, a decrease of 3,784 from the previous week. There were 599,299 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.0 percent during the week ending March 20, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,174,470, a decrease of 170,152 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 4.8 percent and the volume was 6,388,414.

I want to remind everyone why we care. Everyone looks forward to sustainable jobs growth. With high expectations for positive jobs numbers in March’s report (tomorrow), we’d like to know if there’s a new trend in hiring or if this is a small bump while we ride along the bottom. In the past, sustainable jobs growth followed convincing moves below 400k new claims (seasonally adjusted). This number isn’t magical. It isn’t scaled for population growth, so it is pretty much guaranteed to lack a theoretical justification. However, it remains the best leading indicator we have for jobs. We’ve been told that employment is a lagging indicator. GDP recovers first. We’ve been told this, but this hasn’t always been true. It was true in the last two recessions. It’s certainly been true this recession. The problem with GDP as a leading indicator is that it doesn’t give us much information as to when the employment rebound will occur. Our 400k mark seems to more reliably indicate an immediate recovery.

Looking at the good/bad lists this week, our general optimism is confirmed.

The good list (-1000 or more): CA, PA, NC, NJ, MI, OH, IN, FL, TX

The bad list (+1000 or more): OK, IL

IL (the worst) was +1,396 vs CA (the best) at -5,180. As usual, construction, service, manufacturing, and trade get most of the credit for the swings (in that order) for the dominant list. Illinois tried to take some of the wind out of the sails of construction, trade, and manufacturing.

Congress is taking their spring break, though I’m guessing fewer bondage-themed strip clubs will be visited than initially planned. RNC had to ruin it for everyone. But, that’s not the important bit. The important bit is that they let the COBRA subsidy expire. If you lost your job before March 31, no worries. You qualify for COBRA subsidies until the end of the year (that was the March 10 thing Congress did). If you lose your job today or in the near future, you are out of luck. Apparently there was also a flood insurance subsidy that expired along with the COBRA subsidy. Just in time for folks on the east coast to realize they now live in a swimming pool. Arbitrary deadlines are not your friend.

Speaking of arbitrary deadlines and Spring break, April 5 will mark the date another 200,000 people lose their unemployment benefits. I’m not actually sure of the cause of this. Either an extension is expiring or this is an issue of people running through their extended benefits. I couldn’t find a source that made the distinction. Either way, this “recovery” took a turn for the worse for a lot of people.

This last week was a terrible week for the unemployed. This report wasn’t so bad, but the other events that didn’t transpire trumped the report.