Weekly Jobless Claims Tick Lower

Thursday’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed that no special factors had an impact on this week’s initial claims.

As far as how the 271,000 claims compares to estimates, Bloomberg had its consensus estimate at 270,000 and Dow Jones, via the Wall Street Journal, had its consensus estimate pegged at 273,000.

Another reading is the four-week average. This aims to dilute the volatility of the weekly data, and it was up only 1,000 at 272,500.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending August 15 was up 13,000 to 2,269,000. This is the measurement of continuing jobless claims, which comes with a one-week lag and is what is often considered the army of the unemployed.

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If you look at this on an unadjusted basis, the BLS data said:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 226,855 in the week ending August 22, a decrease of 2,396 (or -1.0 percent) from the previous week. The seasonal factors had expected an increase of 2,769 (or 1.2 percent) from the previous week. There were 249,006 initial claims in the comparable week in 2014.