Weekly Jobless Claims May Mute Unemployment Report Expectations

The U.S. Labor Department has released its final set of data prior to Friday’s key unemployment rate and payrolls figures. Unfortunately, it is a bit weak. Weekly jobless claims rose by 8,000 in the past week to 312,000. Dow Jones and Bloomberg were both calling for 310,000 claims.

The four-week average fell by 2,250 to a post-recovery low of 310,250.

Continuing jobless claims, the so-called army of unemployed that is reported with a one week lag, fell by 20,000 to 2.603 million.

While this is a tick higher in weekly claims, the reality is that this alone was not enough to significantly change the payrolls or the unemployment rate expectations. It could have a muted dampening effect, but it seems close enough to estimates, even if it was worse than expected. The other side of the coin is that the ADP report on Wednesday was enough to temper expectations — if TrimTabs did not help negate the negative from ADP.

For Friday’s employment situation report for the month of May, Bloomberg is calling for the unemployment rate to rise 0.1% to 6.4%. Nonfarm payrolls are expected to have risen by 213,000 (vs. 288,000 in April) and private sector payrolls are expected to be higher by 215,000 (vs. 273,000 in April).

ALSO READ: States With the Strongest and Weakest Unions