New Unemployment Claims Coming Down

The latest number on unemployment claims shows a seasonally-adjusted 502,000 people applied for unemployment insurance last week, bringing the more meaningful 4-week average down to 519,750, the lowest since late November 2008. That is a good thing because it shows the labor market is improving.

Nevertheless, 500,000 initial claims in an environment of reduced hiring is still consistent with the loss of 200,000 jobs monthly. We really need to see this number hit 450-475,000 before non-farm payrolls increase.

	Advance				Prior1
WEEK ENDING	Nov. 7	Oct. 31	Change	Oct. 24	Year

---

Initial Claims (SA)	502,000	514,000	-12,000	532,000	509,000
Initial Claims (NSA)	529,446	482,542	+46,904	494,394	539,787
4-Wk Moving Average (SA)	519,750	524,250	-4,500	526,750	490,250

	Advance				Prior1
WEEK ENDING	Oct. 31	Oct. 24	Change	Oct. 17	Year

---

Ins. Unemployment (SA)	5,631,000	5,770,000	-139,000	5,817,000	3,933,000
Ins. Unemployment (NSA)	4,944,307	4,933,444	+10,863	4,984,950	3,460,633
4-Wk Moving Average (SA)	5,790,750	5,891,500	-100,750	5,965,750	3,830,750

Of course, seasonal adjustments are a big factor here going into the holiday season. Actual claims were 529,446, which is up nearly 50,000 from the prior week. The pre-New Year’s seasonal adjustment peak comes in early December (140% adjustment down) followed by another peak in early January (up to 180% downward adjustment). If we see smaller spikes in these weeks (last January hit a peak of 956,791 actual claims), then this could be a harbinger of better to come in Q1.

Source

Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report – U.S. Department of Labor

Comments

[Papaswamp:]

Notice the non-government massaged numbers (NSA) keep rising.

Nov 13 08:07 AM

[John Galt:]

Even if we had +200,000 jobs increased, how many years will it take to get back those 8,000,000 jobs lost?

The fact is we are still losing jobs. We keep digging the hole. People don't spend as much money when they are worried about losing their jobs, the CPI went down... They are scared of a deflation sprial downward and are trying to manipulate data and people to stop it.

How many years will it take to get back those 8,000,000 lost jobs? The population is increasing, old people can't retire. How long before unemployment is back to even 5%? What's the over/under? 10 years? 2019?

Nov 13 09:37 AM

[thiazole:]

"We really need to see this number hit 450-475,000 before non-farm payrolls increase."

And considering that the number has been linearly dropping by over 20,000 a month since the peak, we will easily hit those numbers in a in Q1 2010. I made a bet with the bears that this would occur (no takers, only cowards) and I stand by it: seekingalpha.com/user/...

Nov 13 11:03 AM

[thiazole:]

More than 10 years, because we will have at least one more recession before we recover all those jobs. I say the unemployment rate only gets down to 6 or 7% before the next recession hits, and it will climb to at least 9% on that recession. It is an uphill battle because it takes many years to lose the number of jobs that can be lost in just 6 months of a very nasty recession.


On Nov 13 09:37 AM John Galt wrote:

> Even if we had +200,000 jobs increased, how many years will it take
> to get back those 8,000,000 jobs lost?
>

Nov 13 11:07 AM

[RPTABLET:]

I think it is important to see this as part of a larger picture of unemployment. I used BLS data since 1948 to make this visualization that sheds some more light on our unemployment situation: www.tableausoftware.co...

Nov 13 04:52 PM