Economy

Weekly Jobless Claims Approaching 300,000 Again

Jon C. Ogg

Published: January 21, 2016 10:50 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 2:46 pm

Thursday’s economic report lineup included the weekly jobless claims report from the U.S. Department of Labor. Unfortunately, the trend is moving higher, and if things continue we could be looking at the threat of 300,000 in weekly claims soon.

The Labor Department’s weekly jobless claims were 293,000 in the past week. Bloomberg was predicting that claims would only be 275,000 and the highest Econoday estimate was only 285,000.

As usual, the Labor Department included the tag that no special factors had an impact on this week’s initial claims. Another consideration is that the prior week’s report was adjusted to 283,000 from 284,000.

The four-week moving average was high as well at 285,000, an increase of 6,500 from the previous week. Last week’s four-week average was revised down by 250, from 278,750 to 278,500.

One key issue that 24/7 Wall St. focuses on for the real unemployment situation is the continuing claims. This portion of the report comes with a one-week lag, but it is also what we call the army of the unemployed. This advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment covers the week ending January 9, and it actually was down by 56,000 to 2,208,000. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.6% for the week ending January 9, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the previous week’s unrevised rate.

For the time being, the markets are more concerned about China, the European Central Bank, 2016 corporate outlooks and other measures. Weekly claims are now at the highest level since last July.