Weekly Jobless Claims Versus Unemployment Reading

Weekly jobless claims from the US Labor Department are not likely to have much market impact this morning despite the pending unemployment report for March due Friday morning.  The weekly claims will look like a rise, but after a revision they are technically a drop.

The Labor Department said that the latest weekly claims came to 388,000 after the prior week’s figure had been revised from 382,000 to 394,000.  The 388,000 compares to Bloomberg’s consensus of 380,000.

The army of unemployed measured by the continuing jobless claims in the last week was put at 3.72 million, while the prior weekly figure was revised from 3.73 million to 3.76 million.

Nothing to celebrate here.  This gives little oomph to a significant jobs data change for the March unemployment rate nor for the non-Farm Payrolls data. Bloomberg sees the Friday morning data coming in at 200,000 in non-Farm Payroll gains and sees unemployment being reported as 8.9% (prior month 192,000 and 8.9%).

Too bad we can’t get the government to count the real unemployed people rather than what it counts as an unemployed person.

JON C. OGG