Last week’s snag became this week’s tear. This week’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report indicates further problems in job market stability. New claims rose to 484k. Last week’s number was unrevised. This was increase moved in the opposite direction of the Bloomberg consensus range of 425k to 450k. From the report:
In the week ending April 10, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 484,000, an increase of 24,000 from the previous week’s unrevised figure of 460,000. The 4-week moving average was 457,750, an increase of 7,500 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 450,250.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.6 percent for the week ending April 3, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.5 percent.
The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 3 was 4,639,000, an increase of 73,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,566,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,638,500, a decrease of 13,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 4,652,250.
We’re heading back into a zone where the seasonal adjustments make the problem look better than reality.
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 514,742 in the week ending April 10, an increase of 99,730 from the previous week. There were 610,522 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.8 percent during the week ending April 3, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,931,188, a decrease of 114,048 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 4.7 percent and the volume was 6,327,841.
These numbers don’t tell us anything about the number of new jobs being created. They only tell us about the churn. The churn rate, however, is significantly higher than what we expect to be correlated with a sustainable jobs recovery. As a reminder, the census hiring should be peaking this month, so there’s still a very good possibility of jobs growth. The census then moves from big positive numbers to big negative numbers in a few months, so the underlying weakness will be magnified if it still persists.
The good / bad lists, which lag by a week, give us a slight hint as to the cause, and a little hope for next week:
The good list (-1000 or more): TX, CA, FL, NC
The bad list (+1000 or more): KY, NV, WA, OH, IL, NJ, PA
PA (the worst) was +5,314 vs TX (the best) at -2,973. California reminds us that a government holiday shifted some of the unemployed onto this report. Bloomberg made a similar excuse for Easter. This only gives us a little hope, as it doesn’t address the fact that analysts were still expecting a decrease, and such processing artifacts are easy to account for. There was no discernible trend data in the lists today, so we’ll accept Pennsylvania excuse that it was degradation in the construction, service, food, and transportation industries.
I’m coming up a bit short on other news. The point of obvious interest is the unemployment benefits extension bill. That comes up for a Senate vote today. Expect actual news next week.
This was a weak report.
