New unemployment claims had a significant jump last week to 429k. This week’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report also revised last week’s new claims number up 1k to 404k. Note that the Bloomberg consensus range was listed at 280k to 410k, but I’m suspecting a fat-finger error. 380k makes sense; new claims had zero chance of falling more than 100k. From the report:

In the week ending April 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 429,000, an increase of 25,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 404,000. The 4-week moving average was 408,500, an increase of 9,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 399,250.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.9 percent for the week ending April 16, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week’s revised rate of 3.0 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 16 was 3,641,000, a decrease of 68,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 3,709,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,697,750, a decrease of 22,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 3,720,500.

New claims also increased on an unadjusted basis, but not as drastically as the seasonally adjusted number. These numbers don’t look nearly as frightening:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 385,622 in the week ending April 23, an increase of 3,569 from the previous week. There were 429,196 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.0 percent during the week ending April 16, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,765,074, a decrease of 128,881 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 3.7 percent and the volume was 4,796,318.

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending April 9 was 8,187,232, a decrease of 112,578 from the previous week.

In other, better news, unemployment rates are down in a majority (317 of 372) of metro areas according to The BLS’ Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment Summary. Of course, that report lags by a month, back when we were getting good numbers out of the weekly report.

In worse news, HuffPo reports Black Unemployment At Depression Level Highs In Some Cities.

This was a terrible report. Once again, we have a big jump in the headline number and absolute levels above 400k. With GDP missing forecasts and high gas prices persisting, things are going to be tough moving forward.