5.9 C
New York
Friday, March 29, 2024

Weekly Unemployment Claims: Up 13K, Biggest Increase Since December 2011

Courtesy of Doug Short.

The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report was released this morning for last week. The 380,000 new claims is an increase of 13,000, and that was from an upward revision of 10,000 for the previous week. The less volatile and closely watched four-week moving average came in at 368,500. Today’s jump in claims is the largest since the 14K increase for the week of December 24th. Here is the official statement from the Department of Labor:

In the week ending April 7, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 380,000, an increase of 13,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 367,000. The 4-week moving average was 368,500, an increase of 4,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 364,250.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.6 percent for the week ending March 31, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 2.6 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending March 31 was 3,251,000, a decrease of 98,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 3,349,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,334,250, a decrease of 35,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 3,370,000.

Today’s seasonally adjusted number came in substantially above the Briefing.com consensus estimate of 355K.

As we can see, there’s a good bit of volatility in this indicator, which is why the 4-week moving average (shown in the callouts) is a more useful number than the weekly data.

 

 

Occasionally I see articles critical of seasonal adjustment, especially when the non-adjusted number better suits the author’s bias. But a comparison of these two charts clearly shows extreme volatility of the non-adjusted data, and the 4-week MA gives an indication of the recurring pattern of seasonal change in the second chart (note, for example, those regular January spikes).

 

 

Because of the extreme volatility of the non-adjusted weekly data, a 52-week moving average gives a better sense of the long-term trends. This metric has now fallen below 400,000 for the first time since late November 2008. I’ve now added a linear regression through the data. We can see that this metric has started to slip below the long-term trend stretching back to 1968.

 

 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides an overview on seasonal adjustment here (scroll down about half way down). For more specific insight into the adjustment method, check out the BLS Seasonal Adjustment Files and Documentation.

For a broader view of unemployment, see the latest update in my monthly series Unemployment and the Market Since 1948.

 

 

 

 

Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Stay Connected

157,450FansLike
396,312FollowersFollow
2,280SubscribersSubscribe

Latest Articles

0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x