Thursday’s weekly jobless claims release from the U.S. Department of Labor showed that jobless claims were down 7,000 to a mere 255,000 in the past week. While that is a seasonally adjusted figure, the Labor Department’s report included the traditional note signaling that no special factors had an impact on this week’s initial claims.
If you try to look at the unadjusted claims data, there is not much negativity happening either. The Bureau of Labor Statistics report’s unadjusted claims statement said:
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 255,059 in the week ending October 10, an increase of 27,883 (or 12.3 percent) from the previous week. The seasonal factors had expected an increase of 35,373 (or 15.6 percent) from the previous week. There were 273,756 initial claims in the comparable week in 2014.
It is troubling when you see negative jobs data inside many regional reports and in larger reports, like we saw from TrimTabs this week, that is not adding up with the Labor Department reports.
What is happening, despite jobless claims settling in around their historic lows, is what Bloomberg referred to as a significant lack of slack in the labor market. That 255,000 was said to match the 42-year low posted in July. Even the four-week average was at a four-decade low of 265,000. Continuing claims also fell by 50,000 on its one-week lag.
All in all, the Labor Department data offers signs of hope for the October employment report that will be out at the start of November. The outside data is signaling something else.
All this has to be considered by the Federal Reserve when it wants to raise interest rates. They want to, but the data and the outside pressures are making that decision far more difficult.
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