Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims

Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims - 4 week moving average.



Economists love the weekly initial unemployment claims figure. The number one reason: it is an an actual, real number representing real people which is gathered from state employment offices. It is not an estimate, nor a forecast or a guess. It is the real number of people who applied for the first time unemployment benefits. Second, it is weekly. Weekly is a very frequent release in the world of economics. Compare that to the GDP which comes out once a quarter then get's revised. Or the national unemployment rate which is produced monthly. CPI-U, also monthly. And all three are estimates based on samples. Look at how the reported Black unemployment rate has been jumping around the past three months. A number should not depend on who was answering the telephone that day.

Employment is a lagging indicator but weekly initial unemployment claims responds quickly to economic changes. A lot of forecasting models use weekly unemployment claims number. And if you ever want to know what the coming unemployment rate for next month then just look at the week claims for the previous three months.

Note: the rate is currently close to or below 350,000 claims per month. Below 350K, economists believe the economy adds enough jobs to reduce the national unemployment rate.

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Weekly Unemployment Claims: Downward trends stops cold

We could be cursed with high unemployment for years to come


Since December 1st, 2009, weekly unemployment claims have average about 460,000. A figure is is stubbornly high for a growing economy. You have to ask if we have reached a new bottom on unemployment and things won't get much better.




You can clearly see the flat trend from the past six months in this historical graph of claims since 1999

Weekly Unemployment Claims Rise for 2nd week in a row

The Department of Labor released it's weekly unemployment claims figure for the week ending January 16th, 2010. The claims figure rose by 36,000 from 446,000 to 482,000. It was the second weekly rise in unemployment claims.

The jump could be due to seasonal factors related to end of year business layoffs. But a continued uptrend is a worrisome sign of a continued recession.





The good news is the long term trend is slowly downward after a huge peek in March of 2009.

Weekly Unemployment Claims Continue to Drop

The number of new weekly unemployment claims dropped by 10,000 to 514,000 from 524,000 claims the prior week. The number is also 40,000 less than the two week old figure of 554,000 claims on September 26th, 2009. So a small bit of good news in the recession. However, one must be careful to the huge number of overall unemployment claims.





The long term trend is more disturbing. You can see the giant spike in unemployment claims during the recession when claims jumped from the low 300 thousands to over 600 thousand new claims.

Weekly Jobless Claims Stable for September 12 report

The number of weekly unemployment insurance claims was dropped 12,000 to 545,000 from 557,000 the prior week, the Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration reported(DOL/ETA). The total number of people receiving unemployment insurance increase by 129,000 to 6,230,000 persons. The drops was some small good news in that the recession job losses may be ending




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