Fewer fired, fewer hired. That would be my summary of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report:

In the week ending April 18, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 640,000, an increase of 27,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 613,000. The 4-week moving average was 646,750, a decrease of 4,250 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 651,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.6 percent for the week ending April 11, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 4.5 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 11 was 6,137,000, an increase of 93,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,044,000. The 4-week moving average was 5,944,000, an increase of 142,500 from the preceding week’s revised average of 5,801,500.

The lack of hires is winning against the lack of layoffs. The unadjusted data was in rough agreement with the adjusted data:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 591,952 in the week ending April 18, a decrease of 18,601 from the previous week. There were 328,346 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.8 percent during the week ending April 11, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 6,406,964, an increase of 78,746 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.3 percent and the volume was 3,054,853.

This is the first time in a while that the unadjusted data has told the same story as the adjusted data.

The good/bad lists exhibit their typical volatility:

The good list (-1000 or more): MI, NC, MO, KY, OR, GA, TN, TX, VA, PR, LA, IL, WA, AL, RI, MN

The bad list (+1000 or more): NV, WV, AK, AZ, MD, KS, OH, NJ, NY, WI, CA, PA, FL

FL (the worst) was +9,303 vs MI (the best) at -12,566.

Last week I said I’d be surprised if CA was on the good list again (they had one less reporting day for the prior report, pushing some results to this report). The data didn’t disappoint. Michigan had a huge swing. Their employment situation is dependent entirely on the auto industry.