It’s Thursday. That means that the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report is out. Sadly, it didn’t really make headlines today. Bloomberg had a rather gloomy take on the report with U.S. Jobless Benefit Rolls Reach Record 4.99 Million (emphasis mine):

The number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits jumped to 4.99 million two weeks ago, breaking a record for a fourth straight time, signaling the job market is still deteriorating.

Total benefit rolls surged by 170,000 in the week ended Feb. 7, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. First-time applications for unemployment benefits were unchanged at 627,000 last week, higher than economists projected.

That’s right, unchanged. Apparently that was a big disappointment. I’m rather happy to see that. 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. This week, it’s better news (from the DOL report):

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 615,232 in the week ending Feb. 14, a decrease of 94,921 from the previous week. There were 325,754 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.5 percent during the week ending Feb. 7, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,959,930, an increase of 10,719 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.5 percent and the volume was 3,315,409.

Ok, the total isn’t a great number, but it’s not as bad as the Bloomberg story makes it out. Things could be a lot worse. Just wait a couple weeks for California to top the bad list again.

The good/bad lists have changed.

The good list (-1000 or more): CA, TN, IA, CT, SC

The bad list (+1000 or more): MA, VA, FL, KS, MN, PA, IN, MI, NY, MO, TX, IL, AR, KY

KY (the worst) was +8,419 vs CA (the best) -5,249

Things got substantially worse in a number of states, but the overall numbers took a breather. Things are probably going to get worse, but I feel relieved by this week’s report.