It’s Thursday, and time for the weekly unemployment insurance data. The AP and Bloomberg headlines were both pretty tame. I watched CNBC claim that everyone was being a bit of a Cassandra for calling the numbers recordbreaking given that the labor pool has grown 50% since the prior (higher) high in 1982. It should be no surprise that CNBC had the scary headline: Jobless Claims Hit New Record; Durable Orders Fall.
The number of U.S. workers continuing to claim jobless benefits notched a fresh record in the second week of February, Labor Department data showed on Thursday, while new claims for aid were the highest since 1982.
The number of people remaining on the benefits roll after drawing an initial week of assistance increased by 114,000 to a 5.112 million in the week ended Feb. 14, the most recent week for which data is available. The so-called continued claims topped every estimate in a Reuters poll of 15 economists, which had a consensus forecast of 5.00 million.
Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits increased to a seasonally adjusted 667,000 in the week ended Feb. 21 from a revised 631,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said. It was the highest reading since October 1982, when claims reached 695,000.
Who’s being the Cassandra? 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. From the actual DOL report:
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 602,730 in the week ending Feb. 21, a decrease of 17,221 from the previous week. There were 329,925 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.6 percent during the week ending Feb. 14, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 6,098,530, an increase of 126,384 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.5 percent and the volume was 3,298,510.
The raw numbers show a decrease of 17,221. It’s just not as much of a decrease as the seasonal adjustment numbers would have predicted. Still, the news isn’t that bad.
Let’s look at the good/bad lists.
The good list (-1000 or more): CA, KY, PA, IL, NY, OH, MI, WI, FL, TN, AR, NC, GA, KS, MO, WA, OR, IA, AL, IN, MA, TX , MD, PR (Puerto Rico makes the list!)
The bad list (+1000 or more): NJ
NJ (the worst) was +2,093 vs. CA (the best) at -16,550.
That last bit is encouraging. The size of the good list compared to the bad list is in itself good news. The size difference between the best and the worst is also good news.
The bad news is not that layoffs are getting worse (though on an annual basis, they are), it’s that hiring seems to be way down. It’s important to look at the bit of silver lining in this report.
