New Claims for unemployment insurance fell to 550K this week from a revised 576K. That’s a substantial dip but it does little to change the overall picture. The four week moving average moved down just 1K from 568K to 567K. This is still above the 560K four week average from a month ago.
The big picture is of an economy that is improving very slowly and each new week has served only to confirm that image. Indeed, we are moving closer and closer to an outright stall.
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Thursday ~ September 10th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
dWj
The three-week exponential moving average of the series with a quarter of the seasonal adjustment backed out hasn’t seen an uptick since June.
http://jensfi.blogspot.com/search/label/Initial%20Claims%20of%20Unemployment
Thursday ~ September 10th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Apex
What do you make of the large drop in the continuing claims number?
Do you feel this is from:
1. people just giving up.
2. people exhausting benefits and falling off the roles.
3. Improvement in the long term unemployed finding a job.
4. Some combo of the above.
Or is it just noise?