Initial Claims for Unemployment fell by 10K last week to a revised 580K. The revised figure was 4K above the original estimate last week. The four week moving average fell by 4,500 to 566K.
There is very little good I can say about this. Yes, we are still declining overall but my optimism from a few weeks back is being shattered. it is looking increasingly like a false dip was put in, in July and slope of the recovery is a lot weaker than I had originally thought.
Since, the peak in the week of April 4th, we the initial claims numbers have improved by about 104K or 5K per week. At that rate it will take roughly 35 weeks, another 8 months, to reach 384K. At 384K the economy is my estimate of where the economy would be neither loosing nor creating jobs.
While we have not yet seen the outright stall of the last two jobless recoveries, and I am not sure that we will, it looks like it will be a long slog back to job growth.
The long view:
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Thursday ~ August 27th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
dWj
Seasonal adjustment factor versus (adjusted) initial claims. The data have been overadjusted this summer. If I multiply the adjusted figures by the fourth root of the adjustment factor (i.e. back out a quarter of the adjustment) the data look smoother, with the last four weeks about 25,000 lower than the four weeks before that, which are about 35,000 lower than the few months before that. So the data may be somewhat better than a couple months ago; the adjustment is just giving us whiplash.