U.S. weekly jobless claims increase; layoffs creep up in April

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Reuters

May 5, 2022

8:38 AM EDT
Last Updated 13 min ago

U.S. weekly jobless claims increase; layoffs creep up in April

Reuters

WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits increased more than expected last week, but remained at a level consistent with tightening labor market conditions and further wage gains.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 200,000 for the week ended April 30, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 182,000 applications for the latest week.

Claims had hovered below the 200,000 level since mid-February amid strong demand for workers. Government data this week showed there were a record 11.5 million job openings on the last day of March, which widened the jobs-workers gap to a record 3.4% of the labor force from 3.1% in February.

The labor market imbalance is forcing employers to increase wages, contributing to soaring inflation. Compensation for American workers logged its largest increase in more than three decades in the first quarter, government data showed last week.

{snip}

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-weekly-jobless-claims-increase-layoffs-creep-up-april-2022-05-05/

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. 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, May 5, 2022

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending April 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 200,000, an increase of 19,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 1,000 from 180,000 to 181,000. The 4-week moving average was 188,000, an increase of 8,000 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 250 from 179,750 to 180,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.0 percent for the week ending April 23, unchanged from the previous week's unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 23 was 1,384,000, a decrease of 19,000 from the previous week's revised level. This is the lowest level for insured unemployment since January 17, 1970 when it was 1,371,000. The previous week's level was revised down by 5,000 from 1,408,000 to 1,403,000. The 4-week moving average was 1,417,000, a decrease of 36,250 from the previous week's revised average. This is the lowest level for this average since February 21, 1970 when it was 1,409,750. The previous week's average was revised down by 1,750 from 1,455,000 to 1,453,250.

{snip}

UNADJUSTED DATA

{snip}

The total number of continued weeks claimed for benefits in all programs for the week ending April 16 was 1,478,348, a decrease of 35,165 from the previous week. There were 16,151,803 weekly claims filed for benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2021.

{snip the rest of the ten-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 22-827-NAT

Program Contacts:
Kevin Stapleton: [phone]
Media Contact: [phone]

[progree]

2. Buried news: continuing claims dropped from 1.403 M to 1.384 M, lowest level since 1/17/70

but oh well. Lowest in 52 years, yawn, just ANOTHER multi-decade low. Gets so damn tiresome after awhile. .

Let's instead make an enormous hoo-hah about the increase in the initial claims being above expectations, for the love of Jesus of Nazareth and the Blessed Virgin Mother Mary (I'm learning how to talk and write in a manner befitting our new Chrirhia era (Christian Sharia, pronounced Cry RHEE uh)).

EDIT: I meant to post as a reply to the OP, but oh well. Most Merciful Gentle Jesus of Nazareth knows what is in my heart and will forgive me.

[jaxexpat]

3. Good approach. In a world governed by bible fairies, we don' need no stinkin' facts.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. 200,000 is near record lows

So sick of the negativity regarding Biden's performance from the media. 2021 was the best year for the economy in US history by most metrics, yet all they could talk about was inflation. And any discussion about inflation without also mentioning wage growth is dishonest. Heck, I'd bet even 90% of DU posters don't even know that wage growth for the bottom 30% earners in the US exceeded inflation over the last year.

[progree]

5. Yup, But I've seen many articles calling wage growth a big contributing factor to inflation,

and I don't see how when workers are trying to keep up and fall behind, on average, how that could be contributing to inflation, as opposed to being victimized by it.

I haven't seen the 30% statistic before. Is that in some data series somewhere that one can track?

I'm going by real (meaning inflation-adjusted) average earnings of production and non-supervisory workers (80% of the workforce)

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000032

It actually bounced way up at the beginning of the pandemic (last hired, first fired), but has been falling since April 2020 as lower wage workers are rehired. Its down 2.9% since January 2021.