Claims: Flatter Than A Board
The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Posted 2012-05-10 08:49
by Karl Denninger
in Employment
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Claims: Flatter Than A Board
 

Meh.

In the week ending May 5, the advance figure for  seasonally adjusted initial claims was 367,000, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 368,000. The 4-week moving average  was 379,000, a decrease of 5,250 from the previous week's revised average of  384,250.

This does basically nothing to move the needle.

The big table, however, shows big change.  -132,750 off the regular state programs in the April 21st week and -36k off the EUC.  The total drop was nearly 175,000; the problem is that we do not know, at this point, whether those people found jobs or whether they left the labor force.

The inference from the last employment report is that it was mostly people leaving the workforce.

The headline may have been flat but the internals on that big table suggest a shift -- the trick will be figuring out whether it was for good or bad.

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User Info Claims: Flatter Than A Board in forum [Market-Ticker]
Ktrosper
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Huh, the made up numbers don't look too bad this month!

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Blurtman
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The labor force participation rate is the key metric. Without it, the unemployment claims data cannot be evaluated in its proper context. Food stamp recipient data and SSDI data are also important in the telling of the whole story.

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Uppity_peasant
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Quote:
-36k off the EUC


They're aggressively trying to get people off the EUC.

IMO, they're doing a tap-dance through a minefield with that one. If they're successful, they force down the unemployment rate, which looks good for the November election.

But my guess is that a significant percentage of those forced off will not replace the income, thus impacting the economy. I can just imagine the conferences in the back rooms of power: "Will the lost EUC money in the economy impact the bottom line before the election? How long can we hold gasoline at $4 a gallon before it blows up the tourist economy of the states?"

And on and on and on.

The invisible jobless will have a hard time paying for food and gasoline this hot summer. Fortunately, the banking thieves aren't trying to recapitalize through food & fuel inflation.

Oh, wait...

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this country isn't going to make it to 2022.

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Joejohns
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The fewer in the "pool" the better. Keep it going.

Doesn't matter if they "got a job" or not.

Out here we will take care of those who need it and screw this fascist gvt.
Aaron
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I would love to see all of the "pre-revision decreases" added up...

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Mannfm11
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Just memory math. 6 months ago, it seems the claims number was in the 405K range, so there is 37K of the reduction, the difference between what is going in and coming out after 6 months. My guess is the people in the state pools are more employable than those in the EUC. These are the guys getting hired. The drop in the EUC is more likely less going in instead of more coming out.

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Colk55
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Know something I noticed? Not only do SA claims get revised from one week to the next, so do NSA claims. I first noticed it a few weeks ago when I was updating the spreadsheet I've been using to track claims.

As an example, here's the original news release for the week ending 4/28 from last week:
Quote:
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 330,475 in the week ending April 28
http://www.ows.doleta.gov/press/2012/050....

Here are the current last five observations from the FRED site:

2012-05-05: 338,418
2012-04-28: 333,476
2012-04-21: 370,632
2012-04-14: 370,482
2012-04-07: 390,064

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/ser....

They don't mention the previous week's number was revised but it is.
Quote:
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 338,418 in the week ending May 5, an increase of 4,942 from the previous week.
http://www.ows.doleta.gov/press/2012/051....

338,418 - 4,942 = 333,476, which is the revised number. So, last week's 365,000 SA number is now 368,000 and last week's 330,475 NSA number is now 333,476.

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