Weekly Jobless Claims Trends Still Looking Better Than Worse

The U.S. Labor Department is out with its report on weekly jobless claims were unchanged after a revision higher the week before.  That puts the claims for the last week at 351,000 and the prior report of 348,000 was revised to 351,000.  Dow Jones had estimates of 355,000 for this last week.

The four-week moving average is used as a smoothing-out calculation and that figure fell by 7,000 to 359,000.  The army of the unemployed, measured by the continuing jobless claims, fell by 52,000 to 3,392,000 and that figure has a two-week lag.

Getting closer to 300,000 will truly help unemployment and it will make the ‘underemployment’ and the labor participation situation better.  We are close, but not quite there.

JON C. OGG