Jobless claims: New unemployment claims come in below 1 million for the first time since March

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Yahoo! Finance

Jobless claims: New unemployment claims come in below 1 million for the first time since March

Emily McCormick
Reporter
Yahoo Finance August 13, 2020

The number of individuals filing new unemployment insurance claims improved to a fresh pandemic-era low last week, falling below the 1 million mark for the first time since March.

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

Initial jobless claims, week ended Aug. 8: 963,000 vs. 1.1 million expected and 1.191 million during the prior week

Continuing claims, week ended Aug. 1: 15.486 million vs. 15.8 million expected and 16.107 million during the prior week

Thursday's report ended what had been a previous 20-week streak that new claims totaled more than 1 million, with tens of millions of Americans put out of work during the coronavirus pandemic and forced business closures that ensued. Since the week ended March 20, more than 56 million individuals have filed new unemployment insurance claims.

{snip}

Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jobless-claims-coronavirus-unemployment-week-ended-august-8-2020-171744189.html

---

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

TRANSMISSION OF MATERIALS IN THIS RELEASE IS EMBARGOED UNTIL
8:30 A.M. (Eastern) Thursday, August 13, 2020

COVID-19 Impact

The COVID-19 virus continues to impact the number of initial claims and insured unemployment. This report includes
information on claimants filing Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment
Compensation claims.

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS
SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending August 8, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 963,000, a decrease of 228,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 5,000 from 1,186,000 to 1,191,000. The 4-week moving average was 1,252,750, a decrease of 86,250 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 1,250 from 1,337,750 to 1,339,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 10.6 percent for the week ending August 1, a decrease of 0.4 percentage point from the previous week's unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending August 1 was 15,486,000, a decrease of 604,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised down by 17,000 from 16,107,000 to 16,090,000. The 4-week moving average was 16,169,500, a decrease of 454,500 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised down by 4,250 from 16,628,250 to 16,624,000.

UNADJUSTED DATA

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 831,856 in the week ending August 8, a decrease of 156,453 (or -15.8 percent) from the previous week. The seasonal factors had expected an increase of 40,485 (or 4.1 percent) from the previous week. There were 186,914 initial claims in the comparable week in 2019. In addition, for the week ending August 8, 52 states reported 488,622 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 10.4 percent during the week ending August 1, a decrease of 0.4 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 15,207,671, a decrease of 624,684 (or -3.9 percent) from the preceding week. The seasonal factors had expected a decrease of 32,180 (or -0.2 percent) from the previous week. A year earlier the rate was 1.2 percent and the volume was 1,679,471.

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending July 25 was 28,257,995, a decrease of 3,065,616 from the previous week. There were 1,690,746 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2019.

{snip the next ten pages}

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. It's been under 1m in traditional state-run UI systems, but the people filing claims for PUA ...

Dave Weigel Retweeted

This is the first time in 21-weeks that layoffs do not exceed 1 million people.

Link to tweet

Nope, it's not. It is the first time it's been under 1m in traditional state-run UI systems, but the people filing unemployment claims for PUA (gig, self-employed, etc) are just as hard up and deserve to be counted.

Link to tweet

Another 1.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week. That's 832k under regular state programs (not seasonally adjusted) and another 489k under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.
https://nytimes.com/live/2020/08/13/business/stock-market-today-coronavirus?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

Link to tweet

Seasonally adjusted claims fell to 963k, the first time they've been below 1 million since March.

Link to tweet

Non-seasonally adjusted state claims had basically stalled out at a bit over a million, so good to see them falling again. But to be clear: They are still far higher than in *any* previous recession, even five months into this crisis.

Link to tweet

[Cryptoad]

6. BLS cooking those numbers for the Orange one.....

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. The unemployment claims originate from a different part of the Department of Labor.

The two agencies are in different buildings.

[George II]

2. Let's see how trump spins this into a positive. The thing is most of the people....

....who would have lost their jobs already have, so there are not many left who can lose their jobs.

[progree]

3. Hires: May: 7.2 M, June: 6.7 M from BLS's JOLTs report (latest is June)

(13.9 M hires in 2 months)

There is a heck of a lot of both hiring and firing/separations/layoffs occuring.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm     August 10, 2020

Over the 12 months ending in June, hires totaled 70.2 million and separations totaled 79.1 million, yielding a net employment loss of 8.9 million. These totals include workers who may have been hired and separated more than once during the year.

Lots of cannon fodder left to fire in the 2nd wave:

Employed, from the Household Survey: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12000000

1st 7 months of 2020, in millions
158.714   158.759   155.772   133.403   137.242   142.182   143.532

according to this, 25.4 M net lost jobs between February and April, then 10.1 M net jobs gained between April and July.

I suppose I should include this too:

Nonfarm Payroll Employment (Establishment Survey), https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001
1st 7 months of 2020, in millions
152.212   152.463   151.090   130.303   133.028   137.819   139.582

[progree]

4. Thanks for including the PUMA people, I mean PUA people 😁

I keep thinking PUMA (Party Unity My Ass), when I see PUA (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance).

[mahatmakanejeeves]

8. De nada. The embarrassment of my not doing it was beginning to add up.

It was getting to be a case of "the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away."

[machI]

5. The number of people who have given up looking for a job is increasing.

There are fewer unemployment claims because benefits have run out, and people have stopped looking for a job.

[Yavin4]

9. The Yahoo news report pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with this country.

First, I don't doubt the numbers. The BLS data is indeed accurate, BUT I hate the interpretation of the numbers. 137K less people than expected is not cause for celebration or for reducing benefits. 963K new claims is still pretty fucking awful and shows that the economy is not improving since the beginning of the pandemic.

Take this line:

The number of individuals filing new unemployment insurance claims improved to a fresh pandemic-era low last week, falling below the 1 million mark for the first time since March.

It's putting a positive spin on horrid economic numbers.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

10. This did not come from the BLS. It came from the DOL's Employment and Training Administration.

{snip the rest of the eleven-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 20-1532-NAT

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

[Yavin4]

11. Whomever compiled the numbers is irrelevant to my point.

It's the media spin on the numbers thats relevant.

[progree]

12. fewer unemployment claims than expected ... better than expected ... repeat endlessly

It's putting a positive spin on horrid economic numbers.

Yup, I'm so sick of the game they've been playing for months (years) now -- a poll of a group of economists comes up with some predicted number ... and then the actual number that comes out is almost always better than expected.

At least 90% of the time

I really don't give a hoot whether a number is better or worse than expected. It just means some economists guessed wrong (maybe it should be phrased that way, eh?)

If they MUST for some reason play the expectation game, they could phrase it this way and I would be OK with it:

"Today's unemployment claims number, being far worse than anything seen even in the horrifying pit-in-hell that was the Great Recession, was unimaginably horrible, but not as incredibly horrible as expected. As a result, economists are now predicting full economic recovery will be achieved in the last half of 2024 instead of the first half of 2025"

[czarjak]

13. Roaring rally, rubes?