Jobless Claims Normalizing, at Higher Levels

The U.S. Labor Department is out with its weekly jobless claims. This should be the last report that we would expect any real impact from Hurricane Sandy, as things are getting back to normal. The latest week saw a drop of 23,000 to 393,000 in new jobless claims. Last week was initially reported as 410,000, and that was revised to 416,000. For this week’s reading, Bloomberg had a consensus estimate of 390,000 from a range of 350,000 to 430,000 and Dow Jones had a consensus estimate of 395,000.

Even though the hurricane was the cause for the rise in jobless claims, the rates are still higher than what they were in the weeks and months before the election. Two other measurements were shown as well:

• The four-week average was up by 7,500 to 405,250.
• The army of unemployed, measured by the continuing jobless claims with a one-week lag, fell by 70,000 down to 3.287 million.

These jobless numbers are now normalizing but they are still very elevated for any real “growth” scenario.

JON C. OGG