After two weeks of being highly elevated YoY, initial claims returned to a more “normal” range this week, as except for Florida, hurricane disruptions largely disappeared.

For the week initial claims declined -15,000 to 227,000. The four week moving average increased 2,000 to 238,500. With the typical one week delay, continuing claims rose 25,000 to 1.897 million:

On the YoY% basis more important for forecasting purposes, initial claims were up 6.6%, the four week average up 13.3%, and continuing claims up 4.8%:

We won’t have details on the state by state breakout this week until later, but we did get more visibility into last week’s number, as Florida’s claims increased by over 60% to over 10,000, while North Carolina’s initial claims had the biggest single decrease of any State. On a YoY basis both FL and NC were very elevated. Meanwhile both Michigan and Ohio returned to normal. 

Most likely the remaining part of the YoY increase this week will be discovered to be Florida in the wake of Hurricane Milton. Aside from that, while claims are higher than one year ago this week, they are well within the range of normalcy and not recessionary.

Finally, here is a look at how jobless claims are likely to play into the unemployment rate when the next jobs report is reported in two weeks:

I expect the hurricane distortions to put some upside pressure on the unemployment rate.

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