Jobless claims: Another 353,000 individuals filed new claims last week

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Yahoo! Finance

Yahoo Finance

Jobless claims: Another 353,000 individuals filed new claims last week

Emily McCormick · Reporter
Thu, August 26, 2021, 8:31 AM

New weekly jobless claims hovered near their lowest level since March 2020, underscoring the sustained improvement in the labor market despite ongoing concerns over the Delta variant and worker shortages.

The Labor Department released its weekly jobless claims report on Thursday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Here were the main metrics from the print, compared to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg:

-- Initial unemployment claims, week ended August 21: 353,000 vs. 350,000 expected and a revised 349,000 during the prior week

-- Continuing claims, week ended August 14: 2.862 million vs. 2.772 million expected and 2.820 million during the prior week

At 353,000, the level of new jobless claims was up slightly from the previous week, marking the first increase in initial claims in five weeks. Still, weekly claims have more than halved compared to their weekly pace in August 2020, and have trended lower since the start of 2021.

The U.S. economy, however, has yet to return to the weekly filing levels of the period before the pandemic. New claims were coming in at a weekly rate of just over 200,000 throughout 2019.

{snip}

Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/weekly-jobless-claims-week-ended-august-21-2021-181512231.html

---

Placeholder:

New weekly jobless claims expected to hover near pandemic-era low
Check back for results at 6:30 a.m. ET

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. From the source:

https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf

News Release

Connect with DOL at
https://blog.dol.gov

TRANSMISSION OF MATERIALS IN THIS RELEASE IS EMBARGOED UNTIL
8:30 A.M. (Eastern) Thursday, August 26, 2021

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending August 21, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 353,000, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 1,000 from 348,000 to 349,000. The 4-week moving average was 366,500, a decrease of 11,500 from the previous week's revised average. This is the lowest level for this average since March 14, 2020 when it was 225,500. The previous week's average was revised up by 250 from 377,750 to 378,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.1 percent for the week ending August 14, unchanged from the previous week's unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending August 14 was 2,862,000, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week's revised level. This is the lowest level for insured unemployment since March 14, 2020 when it was 1,770,000. The previous week's level was revised up 45,000 from 2,820,000 to 2,865,000. The 4-week moving average was 2,901,500, a decrease of 108,500 from the previous week's revised average. This is the lowest level for this average since March 21, 2020 when it was 2,071,750. The previous week's average was revised up by 11,250 from 2,998,750 to 3,010,000.

{snip}

UNADJUSTED DATA

{snip. Emphasis mine}

The total number of continued weeks claimed for benefits in all programs for the week ending August 7 was 12,007,632, an increase of 182,165 from the previous week. There were 27,476,415 weekly claims filed for benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2020.

{snip the rest of the twelve-page news release, until the end}

Weekly Claims Archives
Weekly Claims Data

U.S. Department of Labor news materials are accessible at http://www.dol.gov. The Department's Reasonable Accommodation Resource Center converts Departmental information and documents into alternative formats, which include Braille and large print. For alternative format requests, please contact the Department at [phone] (voice) or [phone] (federal relay).

U.S. Department of Labor
Employment and Training Administration
Washington, D.C. 20210
Release Number: USDL 21-1563-NAT

Program Contacts:
Thomas Stengle: [phone]
Media Contact: [phone]

[doc03]

2. To me that number is deceiving, it sounds way worse than it is. If we added up all those weekly job

loses over the years everyone would be out of work. No matter how well the economy is doing there will always be a number
of new weekly unemployment claims. If 353,000 people file new unemployment claims but 900,000 get jobs there is not an additional
353,000 people unemployed. It makes good headlines for the media I guess.

[MisterNiceKitty]

3. Thankfully OP posted this information

Here I'll repost the passage from the OP:

The total number of continued weeks claimed for benefits in all programs for the week ending August 7 was 12,007,632, an increase of 182,165 from the previous week. There were 27,476,415 weekly claims filed for benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2020.

The DOL has information on the U6 unemployment indicator and also information on employment to population ratios and labor force participation rates going back decades. These latter numbers have been in an overall decline since the late Clinton years.

[Farmer-Rick]

4. Jobless claims increased about 4k

But we are in the middle of a 2nd wave of a pandemic....what would you expect?