Jobless Claims rose by 6,000, coming in at 386,000, missing expectations which expected a drop to 375,000. While the previous week’s numbers were revised up from 377K to 380K.
The less volatile four-week average also moved up, increasing by 3,500 to 382,000. This now makes three weeks in a row of moving in the wrong direction.
To put these numbers into better perspective however, it should be noted that the four-week average has been trending down, virtually uninterrupted, from Sept. 2011 thru March of 2012, for a solid 7 month downtrend. And if you exclude the blip up in August of last year, the downtrend extends as far back as May 2011.
The rise in the four-week average this time around has lasted a bit longer than the last one we saw (we’re now in its second month), but when looked at from a larger, longer-term perspective, new claims have been trending lower for roughly 2 1/2 years without a real break in the downtrend, (a few weeks or months notwithstanding).
Of course, when experiencing these undesired numbers in real-time, it can seem much worse because nobody knows when it’ll get better. But the longer-term trend is still intact.
Not much of a consolation for the immediacy, but good to keep in mind as one is assessing the US economy and the jobs market overall.
But some better jobs numbers can’t come soon enough.
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