Weekly Unemployment Claims: Unchanged From Last Week - Thursday, Sept. 10

Here is the opening statement from the Department of Labor:

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending September 5, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 884,000, unchanged from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 3,000 from 881,000 to 884,000. The 4-week moving average was 970,750, a decrease of 21,750 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 750 from 991,750 to 992,500.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 9.2 percent for the week ending August 29, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the previous week's unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending August 29 was 13,385,000, an increase of 93,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up 38,000 from 13,254,000 to 13,292,000. The 4-week moving average was 13,982,000, a decrease of 523,750 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 9,500 from 14,496,250 to 14,505,750. [See full report]

This morning's seasonally adjusted 884K new claims, unchanged from the previous week's revised figure, was worse than the Investing.com forecast of 846K.

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 in relation to the last recession.

(Click on images to enlarge)

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.

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).

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.

Here's a look at each year's claims going back to 2009.

For an analysis of unemployment claims as a percent of the labor force, see this regularly updated piece The Civilian Labor Force, Unemployment Claims and the Business Cycle. Here is a snapshot from that analysis.