Weekly Unemployment Claims: Down 7K, Beats Forecast

A businessman controlling a futuristic display with Claims concept on it. — Duncan_Andison

By Jill Mislinski

Here is the opening statement from the Department of Labor:

In the week ending November 12, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 222,000, a decrease of 4,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised up by 1,000 from 225,000 to 226,000. The 4week moving average was 221,000, an increase of 2,000 from the previous week’s revised average. The previous week’s average was revised up by 250 from 218,750 to 219,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.0 percent for the week ending November 5, unchanged from the previous week’s unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending November 5 was 1,507,000, an increase of 13,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised up 1,000 from 1,493,000 to 1,494,000. The 4 week moving average was 1,481,500, an increase of 31,000 from the previous week’s revised average. The previous week’s average was revised up by 250 from 1,450,250 to 1,450,500.

This morning’s seasonally adjusted 222K new claims, down 7k from the previous week’s revised figure, was better than the Investing.com forecast of 225K.

Here is a close look at the data over the decade (with a callout for the past year), which gives a clearer sense of the overall trend.

As we can see, there’s a good bit of volatility in this indicator, which is why the 4-week moving average (the highlighted number) is a more useful number than the weekly data. Here is the complete data series.

Here’s a copy of the above chart, but zoomed in, so the COVID spike isn’t as prominent.

Unemployment insurance weekly claims report

The headline Unemployment Insurance data is seasonally adjusted. What does the non-seasonally adjusted data look like? See the chart below, which clearly shows the extreme volatility of the non-adjusted data (the red dots). The 4-week MA gives an indication of the recurring pattern of seasonal change (note, for example, those regular January spikes).

not seasonally adjusted with four-week moving average

Because of the extreme volatility of the non-adjusted weekly data, we can add a 52-week moving average to give a better sense of the secular trends. The chart below also has a linear regression through the data.