Filed under: Economy
The U.S. Department of Labor has released its weekly jobless claims. We saw an increase back above the 300,000 level to 311,000 claims. This was an increase of 21,000 from the previous reading of 290,000.
What stands out the most is that this blew through the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg consensus estimates for weekly jobless claims to be 295,000. The range of estimates was very tight at 295,000 to 300,000.
Another observation was that the 4-week average was at a recovery low last week, but it ticked up by 2,000 to 295,750 this week.
The Labor Department also showed that the continuing jobless claims rose by 25,000 to a seasonally adjusted 2.54 million. These continuing claims are what we refer to as the army of the unemployed, and they are reported with a one-week lag in their report.
As usual, the Labor Department said that there were no special factors impacting this week's initial claims.
Our final takeaway from this week's data is that the jump was not just higher than expected. This was a jump handily back above that 300,000 weekly mark. Still, it is far too soon to tell if one higher jobless claims report after last week's very strong report is going to be enough to force very many economists to change their predictions for August's payrolls and for the unemployment rate.
Filed under: Economy
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