Jobs

Weekly Jobless Claims Unlikely to Upset Unemployment and Payrolls Estimates

Jon C. Ogg

Published: December 3, 2015 11:40 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 4:30 pm

The U.S. Department of Labor has given what is the last official government report including key jobs data, via weekly jobless claims, ahead of Friday’s key unemployment and payrolls report.

Weekly jobless claims came in at 269,000 in the past week. While this is a gain of 9,000, it was also during the Thanksgiving week. Bloomberg was calling for 269,000 and Dow Jones (via the Wall Street Journal) was calling for 265,000.

The four-week average was 269,250, versus 271,000 in the prior week.

Despite the Thanksgiving week being a part of the report, Thursday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics release said that no special factors had an impact on this week’s initial claims.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment, the continuing jobless claims, is the measurement of the army of the unemployed. This comes with a one-week lag, but that figure for the week ending November 21 was up 6,000 to 2.161 million. One issue that stands out in the continuing claims is that the prior report was revised down by 52,000, from 2,207,000 to 2,155,000.

Again, this was the last of the live or semi-live reports ahead of the actual Labor Department’s Employment Situation report for November. Bloomberg has the following expectations for Friday’s key economic report:

• Unemployment expected to be flat at 5.0%.
• Nonfarm payrolls expected to be 190,000 (versus 271,000 prior).
• Private sector payrolls expected to be 185,000 (versus 268,000 prior).
• Average hourly earnings expected to be up 0.2% (versus 0.4% prior).
• Average work week expected to be flat at 34.5 hours.

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