Jobless Claims Unlikely to Change Unemployment and Payrolls Expectations

This week has brought three economic reports that all act to form a basis and a bias under the estimates for monthly payrolls and unemployment. Friday’s Employment Situation report from the Bureaus of Labor Statistics already has been influenced marginally by ADP payrolls and TrimTabs payrolls, each showing very different views.

Now there is the Labor Department’s review of weekly jobless claims. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed that weekly jobless claims were 278,000 last week. Bloomberg had the consensus estimate at 270,000, and the prior week’s report was 272,000. All in all, this will not make much waves ahead of Friday’s key unemployment and payrolls report.

The four-week average was down 1,750 to 270,250, and that should be marginally positive versus the prior month’s trend.

Continuing claims, the army of the unemployed, reported with a one-week lag, were up by 3,000 to 2.257 million. That is also tame enough to not make many changes. The unemployment rate for insured workers remained static at 1.7%.

As usual, the Labor Department said that no unusual factors influenced this week’s report.
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ADP said that total private sector employment rose by 214,000 in February. The prior month was revised to 193,000 from 205,000, and the consensus for February was 185,000 from Bloomberg (with a range of 165,000 to 205,000).

TrimTabs estimated that the United States added a mere 55,000 to 85,000 jobs in February. If this proves right, it is the lowest level since July of 2013. Another warning from TrimTabs was that real growth in income tax withholdings turned negative in February as well. The reading of 55,000 to 85,000 was also said to be based on real-time income tax withholdings.

Bloomberg shows that the consensus estimates for the BLS payrolls report due this Friday morning is 190,000 in nonfarm payrolls and 183,000 in private sector payrolls.