Weekly Jobless Claims Tick Higher Ahead of Key Payrolls Report

The U.S. Department of Labor issued its last official labor number on Thursday before Friday’s key unemployment and payrolls report. The weekly jobless claims report for the week ending March 26 showed that the seasonally adjusted initial claims was up 11,000 to 276,000. The prior week was unrevised at 265,000.

Bloomberg had called for 266,000 claims, and Dow Jones was calling for 265,000.

As usual, the Labor Department said that no special factors had an impact on this week’s initial claims. The streak grows by another week for another record — this marked 56 consecutive weeks of weekly jobless claims coming in below 300,000, the longest streak since 1973.

The four-week moving average rose 3,500 to 263,250 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 259,750. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.6% for the week ending March 19, unchanged from the previous week’s unrevised rate.
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One key measurement that 24/7 Wall St. likes to focus on is the advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment. This is the continuing jobless claims, which is the people who have repeatedly been on unemployment (and it is reported with a one-week lag), and it was down by 7,000 to 2,173,000.

Thursday’s Labor Department report may have been higher than expected, but Wednesday’s ADP number was more or less right in line with the consensus estimates. These should wash each other out and not create many changes to official forecasts for the big payrolls report.

Bloomberg’s consensus economist forecasts for Friday’s numbers covering March are as follows:

• Unemployment expected to be flat at 4.9%.
• Nonfarm payrolls expected to be 210,000 (versus 242,000 in Feb.).
• Private sector payrolls expected to be 200,000 (versus 230,000 in Feb.).
• Average hourly earnings expected to be up 0.2% (versus -0.1% in Feb.).
• Average workweek expected to be 34.5 hours (versus 34.4 hours in Feb.).