Jobless claims fall more than expected

[ProSense]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. initial jobless claims fell more than expected last week and showed their biggest decline since February, in a hopeful sign for the U.S. labor market.

The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits dropped sharply to 404,000 from a downwardly revised reading of 441,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

The 37,000 drop in claims was the biggest since the week that ended Feb 6, when claims fell by 51,000. Analysts had expected weekly jobless claims to fall to 420,000.

<...>

The four-week moving average of new claims, which strips out short-term volatility, dropped by 4,000 to 411,750.




Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110120/us_nm/us_usa_economy_jobs_3

[Statistical]

1. The four-week moving average of new claims ...

"The four-week moving average of new claims, which strips out short-term volatility, dropped by 4,000 to 411,750."

This. There is a lot of noise in the weekly numbers but smoothing out the data shows a solid downtrend.

Yhis chart doesn't show the most recent week but I think it shows it well.

[nyy1998]

17. Right, because the 4,000 out of chart range of 400,000 isn't going to show much

but that downward trend is a good sign.

[Javaman]

2. Isn't that special...

Nice to hear that jobless claims drop in a jobless recovery.

:banghead:

[ProSense]

5. Dealing with American realities.

This recovery is mirroring past recoveries.

<...>

But beyond these immediate causes, the basic structure of the American economy also seems to be an important factor. This jobless recovery, after all, is the third straight recovery since 1991 to begin with months and months of little job growth.

<...>

That's no comfort, but given the complexity and severity of this crisis and the problems that have been building for decades, it's going to be slow going.

This is an interesting read: Debt, Housing and Currency: Cautiously Optimistic for 2011

[Javaman]

6. Months and months would be fine, we are into years and years now. nt

[ProSense]

8. The hole is deep.

The economy added more than 1 million jobs in 2010, anemic, but still more than Bush added in his entire Presidency.

There is a huge jobs deficit and job creation needs to pick up dramatically, but at least the economy is adding not subtracting jobs.

[No Elephants]

13. Self delete

[Javaman]

22. In order for there to be a recovery, there needs to be 150k jobs added per month...

that comes to 1.8 million jobs a year.

adding 1 million jobs still leaves a huge deficit.

So while some people are coming off the unemployment stats, there are others whose unemployment insurance ended.

Frankly, I really don't care to argue this point. We still have a 9.7 unemployment figure (with some areas of the nation experiencing high double digits)and there are people out there hurting.

The employment/unemployment figures will continue to fluctuate with some periods good while others are bad. (If I recall, last quarter was bad.) Trying to predict what or how things will move is as good as looking into a crystal ball.

In the end, the banks need to open up their purse strings and start loaning money again. Until then, not a whole lot will change dramatically.

[ProSense]

27. There needs to be at least 125,000 and

I agree there is a deficit. Unemployment is at 9.4 percent. Still, this is a standard report, not a poll subject to the whim of many different pollsters. It's the report that everyone uses to measure jobless claims. There was a report last week, and there will be others in the coming weeks.

[No Elephants]

14. Thank you. Hell, seems as though we've been posting about 99ers for a year.

[No Elephants]

12. NEW jobless claims dropped. Everyone else was already unemployed.

j/k

Sort of.

[Javaman]

24. isn't is sad that we now use dark humor to get us through the night?

Like I always ask people who like to appear informed, "what will we recover to?"

[moose65]

3. Someone will be here to piss on this...

in 3..2....1......

[No Elephants]

16. This kind of attempt never works and probably violates DU rules.

[Little Star]

4. Just means there are more 99er's. Out of sight out of mind.

[dmallind]

9. No it doesn't - that LIE has been refuted dozens if not hundreds of times on DU

There is no excuse for trying it yet again. The INITIAL claims (everyone knows what initial means except in this context it seems) tracked here refer to new applications for benefits. It has absolutely fuck all to do with benefit expirations or even eligibility -only having tried to file a NEW claim last week. Huge numbers of that 404k will get jobs before benefits kick in; huge numbers will be denied them for being fired for cause or quitting; huge numbers of them will start getting benefits in a few weeks. Absolutely none of them will be concerned in any way with benefit expiration, for many mant months if ever.

[No Elephants]

18. So, no more 99ers are lingering? Cool, if true, but I know some.

[Statistical]

19. Nobody said that. However 99er dropping on benefits can't explain drop in INITIAL CLAIMS.

99er dropping of benefits are still included in unemployment rates (U-3 to U-6).

[bread_and_roses]

7. oh whoop de do!

for goddess sake, the country is rapidly sinking into third-world-dom, millions are still out of work with no hope in sight, wages still stagnant as far as I know, health care costs still rising, tax burden on workers and poor still rising, States looking to slash services and jobs, food costs rising - I don't know what their #s say but I go to the grocery store - and we're supposed to cheer "less than expected?" What about all those who've fallen off their charts completely? They just don't exist. What about our nascent tent-cities? What about the poverty figures?

This number is meaningless.

[ProSense]

10. "This number is meaningless." I know

It was meaningless when it rose last week too. It's meaningless except in the context of the trend using this barometer.

[No Elephants]

11. They also rose more than expected near year end. November, was it?

[Coyote_Bandit]

15. something that is completely unrelated

to job creation.....

[Statistical]

20. But is related to job destruction.

If one company creates 100K jobs but another one eliminates 200K jobs kinda hard to get a recovery.
If one company creates only 50K jobs but the second one eliminates no jobs that would be better right?

You can't start climbing until you stop falling. Normal initial claims tend to average 300K to 350K. We need initial claims to be at least below 400K otherwise any job creation will be swallowed up by other companies continuing to reduce payroll.

In every recovery initial claims fell and stabilized around 350K range BEFORE any significant drop in overall unemployment.

[Coyote_Bandit]

28. Even if there was NO job destruction

we'd still be falling behind. Our consumption based economy does not have the ability to provide employment to all who want and need to work. And rather than take measures to encourage real productivity our dim bulb politicians prefer to stimulate consumption rather than productivity.

[ProSense]

23. Not unrelated

Krugman: Unemployment Claims and Employment Growth

This is mainly an excuse to play with some of the features of FRED, the wonderful data site of the St. Louis Fed. On the horizontal axis are quarterly averages of weekly new claims for unemployment insurance over the past decade. On the vertical axis are quarterly changes in nonfarm payrolls. If I had been more careful, I would have taken out the Census jobs somehow, or just done private payrolls. Anyway, yes there is a strong relationship. The recent fall in unemployment claims bodes well for positive job growth; however, we’d really want to see numbers in the low 300s or below; only then would we be seeing the kind of job growth needed to climb out of our deep jobs hole in any reasonable length of time.

Claims averaged about 350,000 through the 1990s.

[Coyote_Bandit]

26. Ummmm......No

The labor force participation rate continues to drop.

But we'd rather look at the unemployment numbers which are a much less accurate reflection of the labor market and much easier to manipulate.

[ProSense]

29. "The labor force participation rate continues to drop." Now

that doesn't have anything to do with job creation.

<...>

The labor force fell by 260,000 in December, and the labor force participation rate fell to at 64.3%, the lowest point of the recession. Incredibly, the labor force is now smaller than it was before the recession started, so the pool of “missing workers,” i.e., workers who dropped out of (or didn’t enter) the labor force during the downturn, remains large. We can estimate its size in the following way. The labor force should have increased by around 4.2 million workers from December 2007 to December 2010 given working-age population growth over this period, but instead it has fallen by 246,000. This means that the pool of missing workers now numbers around 4.4 million. If just half of these workers were currently in the labor force and were unemployed, the unemployment rate would be 10.7% instead of 9.4%. None of these workers is reflected in the official unemployment count, but their entry or re-entry into the labor force will contribute to keeping the unemployment rate high.

link

The unemployment rate would be higher, but the number of jobs created in a month (even as high as 400,000) would only put a dent in the above figure. Conversely, initial jobless claims in the low 300,000s would likely be reflected in a higher jobs number for that month.

[No Elephants]

21. Used one of my very, very rare unrecs. Info in OP article is somewhere

along a continuum from meaningless to intentionally and heartlessly deceptive. Don't see a point in reading it.

[ProSense]

25. Why not just ignore the thread? n/t

[mahatmakanejeeves]

30. Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report (01/20/2011)

Source: Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS REPORT

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending Jan. 15, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 404,000, a decrease of 37,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 441,000. The 4-week moving average was 411,750, a decrease of 4,000 from the previous week's revised average of 415,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.1 percent for the week ending Jan. 8, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate of 3.1 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Jan. 8 was 3,861,000, a decrease of 26,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,887,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,006,250, a decrease of 52,250 from the preceding week's revised average of 4,058,500.



Read more: http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/eta20110061.htm