New Jobless Claims At 320K: A 5K Increase From Last Week

The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Reportwas released this morning for last week. The 320,000 new claims number was an increase of 5,000 from the previous week’s 315,000. The less volatile and closely watched four-week moving average, which is usually a better indicator of the trend, declined to 327,000, a decline of 5,500 from the previous week.

Here is the opening of the official statement from the Department of Labor:

In the week ending March 15, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 320,000, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week’s unrevised figure of 315,000. The 4-week moving average was 327,000, a decrease of 3,500 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 330,500. 

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2 percent for the week ending March 8, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending March 8 was 2,889,000, an increase of 41,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 2,848,000. The 4-week moving average was 2,897,250, a decrease of 16,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 2,914,000.

Today’s seasonally adjusted number at 320K came in below the Investing.com forecast of 325K.

Here is a close look at the data over the past few years (with a callout for the past year), which gives a clearer sense of the overall trend in relation to the last recession and the volatility in recent months.

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.

Occasionally I see articles critical of seasonal adjustment, especially when the non-adjusted number better suits the author’s bias. But a comparison of these two charts clearly shows extreme volatility of the non-adjusted data, and the 4-week MA gives an indication of the recurring pattern of seasonal change in the second chart (note, for example, those regular January spikes).