US DATA: Some clarification on unemploy claims submitted by state
of California. Labor Dept analyst today pointed to CA as cause of the
weekly claims distortions despite the state’s denials that they altered
processing timing. For the Oct 6 wk the NSA change in claims for CA was
-4,979. In the first wks of the qtr, CA usually reports a NSA surge in
claims (+26,244 in the Jul 7, 2012 wk, +6,587 in the Apr 7 wk and
+13,882 in the Oct 8, 2011 wk, for example). So the current reporting is
out of kilter. Could this entirely have resulted in 30k SA moves? NSA
change in overall claims was +29k last wk and another +29k this wk, and
obviously there are severe adjustments also to take into account.