It’s Thursday, and time for the Unemployment Insurance Initial Claims Report. The unemployment consensus was for 645k new claims with a range of 610k to 660k. The seasonally adjusted number came in at 654k. I point out the range to provide a slightly different perspective. Yahoo Finance was carrying the headline New jobless claims rise more than expected. Here’s what they have to say:

With layoffs spreading, the number of initial claims for jobless benefits rose last week, while the total number of people continuing to receive benefits set a record high, the government said Thursday.

The Labor Department reported that first-time requests for unemployment insurance rose to 654,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised figure of 645,000, above analysts’ expectations.

The number of people receiving benefits for more than a week increased by 193,000 to 5.3 million, the most on records dating back to 1967. That’s the sixth time in the past seven weeks that the jobless claims rolls have set a record high.

The labor market has been hammered as employers, squeezed by cutbacks in consumer and business spending, cut jobs at a rapid pace. Some economists say the unemployment rate could reach 10 percent by the end of this year, from its current level of 8.1 percent.

The picture is far from rosy, but this was expected. 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 the unadjusted numbers paint a more stable picture. From the actual report:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 648,363 in the week ending March 7, an increase of 2,536 from the previous week. There were 341,685 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.8 percent during the week ending Feb. 28, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 6,396,429, an increase of 165,349 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.5 percent and the volume was 3,340,432.

Bad, but fairly stable on a week-week basis.

Let’s look at the good/bad lists:

The good list (-1000 or more): MO, MA, NJ, FL, NM

The bad list (+1000 or more): IN, PA, MI, TN, VA, NC, SC, WI, GA, OR, CA, NY

NY (the worst) was +16,481 vs. MO (the best) at -3,350.

There’s nothing very telling in this week’s report. Things are still pretty bad.