Weekly Jobless Claims Not Signaling Any Major Changes Either Way

The U.S. Department of Labor has released yet another weekly jobless claims report. It turns out that the news did not get worse as other labor data has suggested of late. Weekly jobless claims came down by 4,000 to 264,000 claims for the week ended June 3. Last week’s claims were revised up by 1,000 to 268,000.

Reuters, Bloomberg and Dow Jones all expected claims to number 270,000. Bloomberg’s Econoday range was set at 262,000 to 285,000. Thursday’s report implies that layoffs remain in check, and the report was just not far enough off from estimates to make serious waves for investors and traders.

One issue to consider was that this past week did include the Memorial Day weekend. Still, the Bureau of Labor Statistics report specified yet again that no special factors had an impact on this week’s initial claims.

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Another consideration here is that the week of June 3 marks a whopping 66 consecutive weeks of initial claims coming in below 300,000. That is the longest streak since 1973.

The four-week moving average was down 7,500 to 269,500, versus the previous week’s revised average; the prior week’s average was revised up by only 250, from 276,750 to 277,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.5% for the week ending May 28. That is a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the previous week’s unrevised rate.

Continuing claims, those on benefits for more than one week (and reported with a one-week lag) were down 77,000 to a level of 2,095,000. This was the lowest level for insured unemployment since October 21, 2000.

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