Weekly Jobless Claims Posts Drop Ahead of Unemployment Data

We have had a slew of jobs data ahead of Friday’s key employment situation from the Department of Labor. After ADP showed a very surprising larger jump in its payrolls projection for August, now we have the weekly jobless claims from the Labor Department. Initial claims for unemployment came in at a drop of 12,000 to 365,000. Bloomberg and Dow Jones were expecting 370,000 for the prior week. The problem here is that the prior week was revised to 377,000 from 374,000 initially.

There a couple of other stats to watch as well. The four-week average rose by 250 to 371,250 claims. Also, the army of the unemployed that is the continuing jobless claims (reported with a one-week lag) fell by only 6,000 to 3,322,000.

Here are the current Bloomberg consensus targets for Friday’s official employment situation, although we would note that economists likely are raising their payrolls estimates by 20,000 or 30,000 based on the ADP data:

• Nonfarm payrolls 125,000, with a range of 70,000 to 177,000
• Private payrolls 134,00, with a range of 80,000 to 177,000
• Unemployment expected to be flat at 8.3%, with a range of 8.2% to 8.4%

JON C. OGG