Labor Department: Big Drop in Weekly Jobless Claims Amid Retooling Trends

This week’s report showed that jobless claims were down a sharp 24,000 to 340,000. This weekly report also revised the prior week figure to 358,000 from 360,000, and we would point out that claims are usually revised up rather than down.

Bloomberg was calling for a drop to 344,000, and Dow Jones was calling for 340,000. Two more metrics are important each week as well:

• The four-week average fell by 5,250 to 346,000 in the past week.
• Continuing claims, the army of the unemployed (with a one-week lag), rose by 91,000 to 3,114,000.

With all the latest Fed speak from Ben Bernanke and other Fed presidents, we were just not that interested going into the weekly jobless claims report. That is particularly the case given how last week’s big surprise gains were likely due to seasonal issues that are supposed to be smoothed out.