“Layoffs continue at a rate not consistent with a recovering jobs market.” Even Bloomberg is getting infected by the gloom from these repeatedly less-than-stellar reports. This week’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. New claims came in at 472k. Last week’s number was revised up 4k. New claims were outside the Bloomberg consensus range of 445k to 460k. From the report:

In the week ending June 12, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 472,000, an increase of 12,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 460,000. The 4-week moving average was 463,500, a decrease of 500 from the previous week’s revised average of 464,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.6 percent for the week ending June 5, 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 June 5 was 4,571,000, an increase of 88,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,483,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,601,500, a decrease of 21,250 from the preceding week’s revised average of 4,622,750.

As a reminder, we’re waiting for a sustained push below 400k new claims. Our current level of labor market instability is not conducive to jobs growth unless there’s a very obvious, strong jobs engine. The census hiring is largely behind us, and nothing new qualifies as quite so obvious.

While I am in reminder mode, the reason I stopped commenting on the continuing claims number (long ago) is that they only provide the number of people collecting UI benefits from “regular state programs.” They let us know if there’s a “pig in a python” problem coming our way, or what the drain on state resources would be if the federal government dropped their subsidies to the states, but they don’t help much beyond that. I find them worth watching, but caution against drawing too many conclusions from them. For comparison’s sake, we can get the aggregate for federally funded programs, EUC 2008 (Tier I - IV). It was sitting at 4,804,030 (unadjusted) on May 29, up almost 2.5 million from the year prior. This doesn’t provide a breakdown of how many get new jobs vs. how many exhaust all levels of benefits. Since other sources indicate that the number exhausting benefits is quite high, this might be more cause for concern.

The seasonally unadjusted numbers also moved in the unfavorable direction:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 440,701 in the week ending June 12, an increase of 44,112 from the previous week. There were 558,407 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.3 percent during the week ending June 5, unchanged from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,287,298, an increase of 90,879 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 4.5 percent and the volume was 6,082,296.

The good / bad lists don’t tell much of a story due to the impact of Memorial Day. Frankly, I’m surprised the good list isn’t longer (one day less to process claims):

The good list (-1000 or more): CA, FL, NY, IA, NC, CT

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

WI (the worst) was +2,683 vs CA (the best) at -10,386. There was no obvious sector participation, good or bad.

In other news, various unemployment insurance benefits bills are still being debated in the Senate. One version of the extension bill, HB 4213, was voted down yesterday. Two different bills (one authored by each party) come up today.

This was a very disappointing report. We are still above levels associated with recoveries and showing no improvement.