Unemployment Claims: Up is Down

One of the most anticipated numbers any given week of the year was the Seasonally Adjusted First-time Unemployment Claim number. Other anticipated numbers include the monthly unemployment rate, monthly participation rate, jobs created, housing starts, and real estate sales numbers.

The Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, releases its weekly unemployment claims report on non-holiday Thursday Mornings. The data recorded is the non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) first-time unemployment claims (FTU)as well as the NSA Continuing Claims (CC) number. The reported values are the Seasonally Adjusted (SA) FTU and CC numbers. The seasonal factors used to convert the NSA data to the SA data change by category, week, month, season, and year. When data from different seasons with different seasonal factors are compared FACTs (False Assertions Considered to be True) are created. The mother of all FACTs is that we have had 81 consecutive weeks with a SA FTU value under 300,000. This streak did not begin during March of 2015. This streak began during January of 2016.The streak is 31 weeks not 51 weeks.

So what happened this week?

First-time Claims recorded an increase and reported a decrease in numbers. The data for last week was revised down from 193,366 to 193,291 for the NSA FTU value. This is typical. This week's claim level jumped up to a recorded value of 205,751 and a reported value of 252,000 Only in government math does it make sense for the NSA value to jump by 12,000 claims and the reported value to drop by 8,000 claims.

The First-time Claism Number could have been reported As low as 241,000 people or as high as 260,000 people. This means that the "streak" continues. It is now 31 weeks.  The range of values is pretty tight this week. The values for September 17th could have been 81.7 or 84.2 if they used some method to the seasonally adjusted madness. Would people believe them if they reported a value of 244,000?

Continuing Claims stay persistently below 2 million claims. The data for last week was revised up from 1,862,532 to 1,867,279.  This level of  continuing claims is the lowest since 2000.

We need to watch these numbers closely. The elevated levels of multiple job holders  is holding down these numbers.