Suitably Flip

Weekly Jobless Claims Tend To Confirm Stalled Recovery

Economists were predicting today's unemployment claims data to show a modest drop from 453,000 initial claims to around 448,000.  Instead, they ticked up to 456,000 (boo).  But the prior week's data was revised upward to 459,000, so this week actually showed an itsy decline after all (hooray?).

But you needn't worry your pretty little head messing about with the numbers for the salient bits.  That's what the helpful AP is for.

[N]ew claims for unemployment insurance dipped slightly for the third straight week.

Why that sounds like a downright pattern!

Sadly, the mild and fledgling streak results from a spike in the famously volatile initial claims number in mid-May.  If you hold your thumb up to the 4-week average instead (as do many outside the AP when sussing out short-term trends), you instead find initial claims rising for four straight weeks.

No, it's not a dreadful rise, but it ain't pretty either.  This is the third quarter of recovery after all.  These are supposed to be the layup months.  Initial claims should be plummeting by 20,000-30,000 a month with the economy on autopilot.  Instead, year-to-date, we've actually seen the number bump slightly higher (from 454,000 to 456,000).

It took the dreaded Bush economy all of three months after 9/11 to get back below these levels, and it maintained that lesser joblessness (excepting one anomalous week in March of the following year) for nearly seven years.

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Weekly Jobless Claims Tend To Confirm Stalled Recovery

Economists were predicting today's unemployment claims data to show a modest drop from 453,000 initial claims to around 448,000.  Instead, they ticked up to 456,000 (boo).  But the prior week's data was revised upward to 459,000, so this week actually showed an itsy decline after all (hooray?).

But you needn't worry your pretty little head messing about with the numbers for the salient bits.  That's what the helpful AP is for.

[N]ew claims for unemployment insurance dipped slightly for the third straight week.

Why that sounds like a downright pattern!

Sadly, the mild and fledgling streak results from a spike in the famously volatile initial claims number in mid-May.  If you hold your thumb up to the 4-week average instead (as do many outside the AP when sussing out short-term trends), you instead find initial claims rising for four straight weeks.

No, it's not a dreadful rise, but it ain't pretty either.  This is the third quarter of recovery after all.  These are supposed to be the layup months.  Initial claims should be plummeting by 20,000-30,000 a month with the economy on autopilot.  Instead, year-to-date, we've actually seen the number bump slightly higher (from 454,000 to 456,000).

It took the dreaded Bush economy all of three months after 9/11 to get back below these levels, and it maintained that lesser joblessness (excepting one anomalous week in March of the following year) for nearly seven years.