In the week ending February 16, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 362,000, an increase of 20,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 342,000. The 4-week moving average was 360,750, an increase of 8,000 from the previous week's revised average of 352,750.
....
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 346,428 in the week ending February 16, a decrease of -14,758 from the previous week. There were 346,659 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.
So we have a reasonable actual .vs. "adjusted" number -- heh, look at that!
What's the big table look like?
Interesting -- the EUC rolloff continues, now under 2 million total. This is very significant, but note carefully that there is yet to be any evidence that these "newly not-drawing-UE folks" are getting jobs. That, in turn, should be expected to show up in retail spending over the next few months, and not in a good way either.
But this week, which was the first post the February employment report, did show a nearly 77,000 drop in regular claim participants.
Call it a mixed bag with a mild positive bias for today.
