Here's the scoop on the Labor Department's weekly initial jobs claims report:
- Associated Press Headline And Lead:
"Jobless claims dip, spending up in sign of rebound... In a hopeful sign for the economy, the number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits fell below 500,000 last week for the first time since January."
- Labor Department News Release: click here.
- Key Numbers: "The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted,
totaled 543,926 in the week ending Nov. 21, an increase of 68,080 from the previous
week. There were 609,138 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008."
- My Spreadsheet (click Download 20091119yoy).
Here's my uneducated interpretation - Year-Over-Year initial jobless
claims were significantly lower than last year. This
means that fewer people are losing their jobs now than a year ago. This week, being around Thanksgiving, appears in the historical data to have quite a bit of volatility. Here's a way of looking at when unemployment might peak.
We are still 100,000 initial jobless claims a week higher in 2009 than we were in 2002 (see graph below), but are trending downward. At the current trend 2010 jobless claims should match 2003 jobless claims around the beginning June of 2010.
The unemployment rate peaked in the previous recession in June of 2003 (at a measly 6.3%) (see Bureau Of Labor Statistics graph below).
So, extrapolating from the current initial jobless claims relative to the 2001/2002 recession and the unemployment peak from the 2001/2002 recession, gives us an estimated unemployment peak for the current downturn of June 2010.
This is pretty crude, but at least it has a couple of graphs to back it up.
MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us
P.S., As much as I admire Karl Deninger's work, I find today's post where he questions the seasonal adjustment to be hysterical (without looking into earlier years to see where the seasonal adjustments came from) and to be a case where he is forcing his viewpoint on the data rather than letting the data speak to him.
Recent Comments