Here is the opening statement from the Department of Labor:

REVISION TO SEASONAL ADJUSTMENT FACTORS

Beginning with the Unemployment Insurance (UI) Weekly Claims News Release issued Thursday, April 7, 2022, the methodology used to seasonally adjust the national initial claims and continued claims reflects a change in the estimation of the models.

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending April 9, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 185,000, an increase of 18,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 1,000 from 166,000 to 167,000. The 4-week moving average was 172,250, an increase of 2,000 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 250 from 170,000 to 170,250. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.1 percent for the week ending April 2, unchanged from the previous week's unrevised rate.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 2 was 1,475,000, a decrease of 48,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 1,523,000. The 4-week moving average was 1,511,500, a decrease of 29,750 from the previous week's unrevised average of 1,541,250. [See full report]

This morning's seasonally adjusted 185K new claims, up 18K from the previous week's revised figure, was below the Investing.com forecast of 171K.

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.

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.

Here's a copy of the above chart, but zoomed in, so the COVID spike isn't as prominent. We'll be adding a few more of these "zoomed in" looks in the coming weeks.

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 a sample of 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.