The U.S. Department of Labor has just released another report on weekly jobless claims. Its advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 260,000, an increase of 1,000 from the previous week’s unrevised level of 259,000. Bloomberg had its consensus reading pegged at 265,000.
As we usually see, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said that no special factors had an impact on this week’s initial claims. The advance number of actual initial claims was even close on an unadjusted basis for seasonality at 245,153 in the week ending October 24, an increase of 12,433 (or 5.3%) from the previous week. The seasonal factors had expected an increase of 11,649 (or 5.0%) from the previous week. There were 271,331 initial claims in the comparable week in 2014.
The four-week moving average, which aims to smooth out the weekly volatility, was down 4,000 to a reading of 259,250. This was shown to be the lowest level for this average since December 15, 1973 when it was 256,750.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.6% for the week ending October 17, unchanged from the previous week’s unrevised rate.
Continuing jobless claims, which is reported with a one-week lag, was said to be down 37,000 to 2,144,000. While this is what we refer to as the army of the unemployed, the BLS represented that the continuing claims was the lowest level for insured unemployment since November 4, 2000, when it was 2,110,000. The previous week’s level was revised up 11,000 from 2,170,000 to 2,181,000.
Thursday’s report is unlikely to greatly change any payrolls and unemployment expectations that will be released next Friday. We also have one more weekly claims report ahead of that more important monthly reading.
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