The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report was released this morning for last week. The 339,000 new claims number was a 2,000 decline from the previous week's 341,000, an upward revision from 338,000. The less volatile and closely watched four-week moving average, which is usually a better indicator of the trend, rose by 8,500 to 357,250, which is only slightly below the 4-week moving average at the end of 2012.

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

In the week ending December 28, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 339,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 341,000. The 4-week moving average was 357,250, an increase of 8,500 from the previous week's revised average of 348,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2 percent for the week ending December 21, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending December 21 was 2,833,000, a decrease of 98,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,931,000. The 4-week moving average was 2,857,750, an increase of 19,000 from the preceding week's revised average of 2,838,750.

Today's seasonally adjusted number came in above the Investing.com forecast of 334K.

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.

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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.

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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).

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Because of the extreme volatility of the non-adjusted weekly data, a 52-week moving average gives a better sense of the secular trends. I've now added a linear regression through the data. We can see that this metric continued to fall below the long-term trend stretching back to 1968.

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A Four-Year Comparison

Here is an overlay of the past three calendar years and the beginning of 2013 using the 4-week moving average. The purpose is to show the relative annual slope of improvement since the peak in the spring of 2009. This year got off to an excellent start. It then oscillated a bit, stalled for about nine weeks and then headed lower from early July until October. After four reports in the wrong direction (largely resulting from computer upgrades in some states), the trend had been clearly on the mend. But after five weeks of improvement, the four weeks of December have witnessed a reversal. We're closing the year only 7,250 below the 4-week MA at the end of 2012.

For an analysis of unemployment claims as a percent of the labor force, see my recent commentary What Do Weekly Unemployment Claims Tell us About Recession Risk? Here is a snapshot from that analysis.

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For a broader view of unemployment, see the latest update in my monthly series Unemployment and the Market Since 1948.