Jobless claims: Another 547,000 Americans filed new unemployment claims

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Yahoo! Finance

Jobless claims: Another 547,000 Americans filed new unemployment claims

Emily McCormick·Reporter
Thu, April 22, 2021, 8:31 AM

New weekly jobless claims unexpectedly plunged to a new pandemic-era low.

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

-- Initial jobless claims, week ended April 17: 547,000 vs. 610,000 expected and a revised 586,000 during the prior week

-- Continuing claims, week ended April 3: 3.674 million vs. 3.650 million expected and a revised 3.708 million during the prior week

Last week's new claims came as a welcome surprise after more than a year of elevated initial filings. At 547,000, new claims broke below the Great Recession-era high of 665,000 filed in March 2009 for a second straight week. And claims have dropped precipitously from their all-time high of 6.1 million from last spring.

But the labor market recovery has still been choppy, and the general downtrend in new jobless claims over the past several months has come with some bumps higher. Other reports have also underscored the stop-and-start nature of the rebound, with the Federal Reserve's latest Beige Book last week noting that many regions continued to experience labor shortages as well as hiring challenges over the past several weeks.

{snip}

Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/weekly-jobless-claims-week-ended-april-17-2021-pandemic-180036636.html

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. 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, April 22, 2021

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending April 17, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 547,000, a decrease of 39,000 from the previous week's revised level. This is the lowest level for initial claims since March 14, 2020 when it was 256,000. The previous week's level was revised up by 10,000 from 576,000 to 586,000. The 4-week moving average was 651,000, a decrease of 27,750 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 down by 4,250 from 683,000 to 678,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.6 percent for the week ending April 10, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the previous week's unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 10 was 3,674,000, a decrease of 34,000 from the previous week's revised level. This is the lowest level for insured unemployment since March 21, 2020 when it was 3,094,000. The previous week's level was revised down by 23,000 from 3,731,000 to 3,708,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,713,000, a decrease of 41,750 from the previous week's revised average. This is the lowest level for this average since March 28, 2020 when it was 3,611,750. The previous week's average was revised down by 8,250 from 3,763,000 to 3,754,750.

{snip}

UNADJUSTED DATA

{snip. Emphasis mine}

The total number of continued weeks claimed for benefits in all programs for the week ending April 3 was 17,405,094, an increase of 491,674 from the previous week. There were 12,492,421 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 21-707-NAT

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

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Mojo, MoJoe, Mo' Joe

Competent government has seized the moment. This is now momentum, and it's forward looking and ongoing.

Republicans have only imaginary vote-cheating fantasies to sell.

I'm loving it!

[DallasNE]

4. The Jobs Numbers Continue To Baffle Me

The monthly survey on job creation seems to be far out of whack with what this report of initial and continuing claims say.

We are just now dropping below the peak of the Great Recession. Our jobs report now shows unemployment is now at a fairly modest 6 percent. They have to be counting people on temporary layoff and drawing benefits as employed and to me that is a distortion. And that count has to be substantial, perhaps 15 million.

[progree]

5. "counting people on temporary layoff and drawing benefits as employed"

they are not supposed to be

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

As in previous months, some workers affected by the pandemic who should have been classified as
unemployed on temporary layoff were instead misclassified as employed but not at work. However, the
share of responses that may have been misclassified was highest in the early months of the pandemic
and has been considerably lower in recent months. Since March 2020, BLS has published an estimate of
what the unemployment rate might have been had misclassified workers been included among the
unemployed. Repeating this same approach, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in March 2021
would have been 0.4 percentage point higher than reported. However, this represents the upper bound of
our estimate of misclassification and probably overstates the size of the misclassification error.
More information about the impact of the pandemic on the two surveys is available at
www.bls.gov/covid19/employment-situation-covid19-faq-march-2021.htm.

The monthly JOLTS reports are showing that there is a LOT of turnover, both hires and separations, compared to pre-pandemic times.

As for the monthly "first Friday" official unemployment rate, they don't count jobless people who said they did not look for work in the last 4 weeks as "unemployed". Nor employed. They are classified as "not in the labor force".

[DallasNE]

6. I Was Not Aware Of The JOLTS Report

So thanks for pointing that out. It shows a net loss of 8.6 million jobs in the last 12 months ending with February.

[progree]

7. Interesting. The Establishment Survey shows 9.3 million job loss February over February

(the monthly headlines job loss/gains number)
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001
February 2020: 152,523,000
February 2021: 143,204,000
Delta: -9,322,000
So it's in the same ball park.