It’s Thursday, and the DOL released the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report. Once again, let’s start with some random news headline. Yahoo Finance has the story U.S. jobless claims dip but by less than expected:

The department said initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits slipped 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 623,000 in the week ending February 7. Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting 610,000 claims. The previous week’s claims were revised up to 631,000, the highest since the week ending October 30, 1982.

This sounds pretty good. As usual, if you are tracking employment trends, the seasonally adjusted number is probably the way to do it. However, if you are concerned about other people or your own job, you might want to look at the unadjusted numbers. Unfortunately, they’re moving in the opposite direction. From the actual DOL report:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 706,267 in the week ending Feb. 7, an increase of 24,091 from the previous week. There were 377,457 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.4 percent during the week ending Jan. 31, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,940,432, an increase of 133,551 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.5 percent and the volume was 3,328,590.

Extended benefits were available in North Carolina, Oregon, and Rhode Island during the week ending Jan. 24.

706,267 is a big number. And, the adjusted numbers are widening away from the unadjusted numbers once again. There was other troubling information in the report. This is back to the seasonally adjusted data:

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Jan. 31 was 4,810,000, an increase of 11,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,799,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,745,250, an increase of 73,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 4,671,500.

It’s great that states are extending benefits, but people are also staying unemployed longer. That’s likely to be reflected in the monthly unemployment rate.

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

The bad list (+1000 or more): CO, MI, AZ, TX, MD, WI, SC, TN, OR, IA, FL, WA, KS, GA, OH, NC, CA

CA (the worst) was +20,001 (how precise) vs. VA (the best) -1,937.

The unadjusted numbers are up, and the continuing unemployment numbers are up. I’m not celebrating.