First-time Claims tend to Spike during the First week of January

First-time claims Lowest for This Week of Year since 1969

Last week was the 252nd consecutive week with Seasonally Adjusted (SA) First-time (FTU) Claims being reported under 300,000 claims. Last week was the 142nd consecutive week where we had the seasonally adjusted continuing claims (CC) reported under 2.0 million claims.  The streaks continue.

Non-Seasonally Adjusted Claims were at their lowest level for the second week of January Since January 1967. The NSA FTU value did creep slightly higher from last week's revised 335,480 clams to 336,892. There are 145,230,691 million covered insured. The most ever. There were 334,000 during the second week of January 1967.

Seasonally adjusted first-time claims dropped to 204,000 claims. This is the 253rd consecutive weeks with the SA FTU reported under 300,000. This could have been the earliest week in the year when the SA FTU was reported under 200,000 claims. This is the lowest SA FTU level for the second week of January since 1969.

Continuing Claims rose slightly from 2.147M to 2.247M claims.  This is still lower than it was during the first Week of January of 2017. This should be the peak for this year. The comparisons are here.  The continuing claims level is slightly higher than the first week of 2017 (2.416M) and 2018 (2.146M) with 3.7 million and 1.7 million more covered insured, respectively.

Seasonally Adjusted Continuing Claims dropped from 1.804 million to 1.767 million claims.  This is the 143rd consecutive week with the SA CC under 2.0 million claims.

What does this all mean? People are being hired and fired. They are being hired and fired at some of the best levels recorded during the past 40 years. High levels of hiring, low levels of unemployment. We will find out . The December ADP Payroll report was released last week along with the December Employment Situation Report. Tomorrow we will receive the November JOLTS report.

It's the Economy.