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Thursday, June 14, 2012

First Time Jobless Claims

And, of course, if it's Thursday it's all about unemployment[1].
 
Last week, we had an advance figure of 377,000 seasonally-adjusted first time claims for the week ending June 2, 2012.  That was considered good news, because it was down 12,000 from the previous week.  This week, the Econoday-surveyed analysts are expecting the trend to continue, calling for 375,000 new claims.
 
For the details on whether or not this optimism is justified, we turn to the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report from the U.S. Department of Labor.  A report that jumps right in and slaps the analysts in the face.  The seasonally adjusted advance figure for initial claims for the week ending June 9 comes in at 386,000 - increasing by 9,000 instead of declining by 2,000.  So yeah, ouch.  Better yet, the figures for June 2 have been revised upwards to 380,000.  So that's no fun, either.
 
The unadjusted number of actual initial claims under state programs comes in at 373,540, up 49,155 from June 2.  Meanwhile, the total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending May 26 fell 145.990 to "only" 5,824,359 people.
 
So we can distinctly call this "mixed signals" for the marketplace.  CPI is better than expected, jobless claims are worse.
 
[1]  Except for Thanksgiving.  Then it's all about gorging yourself on turkey, and unemployment happens on Wednesday.
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