The data on weekly jobless claims from the Labor Department fell by 44,000 in the last week to 434,000. We had expectations of about 430,000 for the week. Sadly, the already negative reading of 474,000 reported a week earlier was revised to 478,000.
The four-week average is a smoothing-out indicator, and it fell by 4,500 to 436,750. When we look at the army of unemployed measured by the continuing jobless claims, that figure has a one-week lag but came in with a gain of 5,000 to 3,756,000 last week.
The good news is that the weekly jobless claims came down quite a bit. The bad news is that the reading is still well above 400,000. This needs to get closer to 300,000 and needs to be sustained for a real employment recovery. Those claims may even need to go lower now that more workers have started looking for work again as we saw when official unemployment rose last month.
JON C. OGG
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