It’s Thursday, and time for the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report. Oddly enough, the news wasn’t as good as last week, and it made headlines this week. The GDP revision came out today, so there was arguably more important news competing for headline space. From the report:

In the week ending March 21, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 652,000, an increase of 8,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 644,000. The 4-week moving average was 649,000, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 650,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.2 percent for the week ending March 14, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 4.1 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending March 14 was 5,560,000, an increase of 122,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 5,438,000. The 4-week moving average was 5,331,250, an increase of 123,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 5,207,500.

Those are the seasonally adjusted numbers. The unadjusted numbers—the numbers that correspond to actual people—were a little better than the adjusted numbers:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 585,897 in the week ending March 21, a decrease of 15,266 from the previous week. There were 316,598 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.8 percent during the week ending March 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 6,433,406, an increase of 76,204 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.4 percent and the volume was 3,254,650.

Better, but still mixed.

Let’s look at the good/bad lists:

The good list (-1000 or more): CA, MI, IN, PA, OH, AL, OR, NC, NY, GA, WA, WI, SC, NJ, MD

The bad list (+1000 or more): TX, TN

TN (the worst) was +1,394 vs. CA (the best) at -8,555.

Unfortunately, those changes in initial claims don’t mean a whole lot when hiring has dropped off faster in some areas. California’s employment seems to be continuing its slide.