Unexpected Drop in Weekly Jobless Claims

The U.S. Department of Labor has reported an unexpected drop in its reading on weekly jobless claims for the week ending February 13. Its advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was down by 7,000 to 262,000. The prior week’s reading was left unrevised at 269,000.

Dow Jones (via the Wall Street Journal) was calling for a consensus reading of 275,000. Bloomberg noted that this was the lowest reading since November and is also down 32,000 from the mid-point of January and may set the tone for the Payrolls and Unemployment figures as the sample weekly report.

As we usually see in the Labor Department’s weekly reports, they specified that no special factors had an impact on this week’s initial claims.

Another drop was seen in the four-week moving average, falling by 8,000 to 273,250.
[nativounit]
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.7% for the week ending February 6, an increase of 0.1% from the previous week’s unrevised rate.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment (the continuing claims, with a one-week lag) during the week ending February 6 was up by 30,000 to 2,273,000 from the prior week’s revised level (revised up 4,000 to 2,243,000).

We now have seen several of the economic reports start to show a deviation from what had been only declines. These numbers are generally still not great, but they are enough that they may still lend credence for Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve to keep on the path toward more rate hikes and return to normalization.