Nothing of note in the weekly unemployment insurance claims report -- or is there?
In the week ending Feb. 12, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 410,000, an increase of 25,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 385,000. The 4-week moving average was 417,750, an increase of 1,750 from the previous week's revised average of 416,000.
Yeah, okay. "Revised" again. And there's that 4-handle.
Let's look at the big table, my personal favorite:
[Click to enlarge]
More "99ers" coming off, I think. We'll see.
This is January, though. Next week we start getting February numbers, and unfortunately we will only get a couple of them before the report comes out.
Nothing of note here ... I don't see material improvement in the employment situation. Looks to me like we're still running well below the "new coming of age" injection rate of new people into the workforce, so the participation rate, assuming this continues through February, should continue its decline.
