Revisions are a permanent hazard in reporting on economic data. That was very much in evidence in this week’s jobless claims report.

Not only was last week’s number revised down by -17,000, but the initial report of 264,000 two weeks ago is now all the way down to 231,000! Big difference.

Anyway, the current report indicates a weekly uptick of 4,000 to 229,000. The 4 week moving average was unchanged at 231,750. Continuing claims, with a one week delay, declined -5,000 to 1.794 million:

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On a YoY% basis, after revisions claims are currently up only 6.5%, and the more important 4 week average only 7.2%. Only continuing claims continue to show big gains of 25.3%:

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Most importantly, after revisions the 4 week average has never crossed the 12.5% threshold, and has been below 10% for the last two weeks. Should claims be below 10% YoY as well, I will remove the yellow flag - pending revisions.

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