The First-time Unemployment Claims tend to peak during the first week of July

The Continuing Claims Data tends to peak during the Second Week of July

There are two peaks to the unemployment claims data, the January Peak and the July Peak. The highest peak of the year normally happens the first week of January for non-seasonally adjusted (SA)  first-time unemployment (FTU) claims and during the second week of January for NSA Continuing Claims (CC.) a secondary peak happens the first week of July for FTU and the Second week of July for CC. This year the data is a little more interesting with a fifth Saturday during the month of June. It was also interesting because the data was released on Wednesday instead of Thursday due to Independence Day falling on Thursday.

The Non-seasonally adjusted first time claims number dropped slightly to  222,844. This is lower than last year during the same time of year and 3,000 claims lower than last week. The data indicated  that the NSA FTU could fall to the 221,000 to 224,000 range.

The Seasonally Adjusted FTU came in at 221,000 claims, down from 229,000. The SA FTU could have been reported lower or much higher if we used the seasonal factors for the same week of the year from prior years. Here is is important to remember that while there were fewer NSA FTU claims during the week ending June 30, 1973 (215,000 versus 223,000) there were also much fewer covered insured workers (58.6 million versus 143.6 million,) There were a whopping 8,000 more claims this week than during 1973 and there were 95,000,000 more workers.covered. The seasonally adjusted first-time claims data has been under 300,000 claims since March 7, 2015. We have already had two weeks under 200,000 SA FTU this year.

The non-seasonally adjusted continuing claims number rose slightly from 1.558 million to 1.579 million claims. This was anticipated. The data indicated that the continuing claims could rise or fall by roughly 1.00%. Claims rouse by 1.37%. This is still 69,000 claims fewer than the same week last year. It was also almost identical to the 1.579 million claims that we had during the week of June 27, 1970. Again, we had 90 million fewer covered insured during that week of the year. The data is unavailable for 1970.

The seasonally adjusted continuing claims dropped from 1.694 million to 1.686 million. Virtually any number under 2 million claims is a good number. The value could have been reported at 1.647 million claims. The seasonally adjusted continuing claims under 2 million claims started April 1, 2017. This has received "no attention."

The percentage of people receiving continuing unemployment claims (IUR) is at all all-time low for this week of the year at 1.10%. The IUR last year at this time was 1.16%. The lowest it had ever been since 1971 was 1.11% during October 2017. That October level was beaten during October of 2018 was 0.95%. We could drop below 0.90% this year. This receives "no attention."

The Unemployment data came in as was expected. Continuing claims may hit the lowest level recorded since October of 1973 when we reach the first week of October this year. We may even set a record for the number of weeks during a year with the non-seasonally adjusted first-time claims under 200,000 this year. We are ahead of where we were as year at this time. The insured unemployment rate may fall below 0.90%  Sooner or later someone n the media will catch on and report this (Ahem.)

It's the economy.