US initial jobless claims and continuing claims
- initial jobless claims 881 vs. 950K estimate
- 4 week moving average have initial jobless claims 991.75K vs 1069.25 last week
- continuing claims 13254K vs 14000K estimate.
- 4 week moving average of continuing claims 14496.25K vs 15205.25K last week
Note starting this week, there is a change in the seasonality of the data for claims from the Labor Department.
In their words:
Beginning with the Unemployment Insurance (UI) Weekly Claims News Release issued Thursday, September 3, 2020, the methodology used to seasonally adjust the national initial claims and continued claims will reflect additive factors as opposed to multiplicative factors.
Seasonal adjustment factors can be either multiplicative or additive. A multiplicative seasonal effect is assumed to be proportional to the level of the series. A sudden large increase in the level of the series will be accompanied by a proportionally large seasonal effect. In contrast, an additive seasonal effect is assumed to be unaffected by the level of the series. In times of relative economic stability, the multiplicative option is generally preferred over the additive option. However, in the presence of a large level shift in a time series, multiplicative seasonal adjustment factors can result in systematic over- or under-adjustment of the series; in such cases, additive seasonal adjustment factors are preferred since they tend to more accurately track seasonal fluctuations in the series and have smaller revisions.
Prior to September 2020, the seasonally adjusted unemployment insurance claims series used multiplicative seasonal adjustment factors. Starting in September Bureau of Labor Statistics staff, who provide the seasonal adjustment factors, specified these series as additive. In accordance with the usual practice, the seasonal adjustment models and factors will be reviewed at the beginning of each calendar year, when prior years of seasonally adjusted estimates will be subject to revision.
In short, the numbers are a little bit of apples and oranges from week to week.
The unadjusted number of actual initial claims totaled 821,591 last week revised to 825,761. This week the unadjusted number came in at 833,352 which is up 7591 from last week.
The total number of people claiming benefits and all programs for the week ending August 15 was 29,224,546. That is an increase of 2.195 million from the previous week. As a point of comparison there were 1,639,622 persons claiming benefits and all programs in the comparable week in 2019.
The Dow has turned back positive on a adjusted basis relative to the futures. It is currently up 32 points. The NASDAQ index has also improved but still is implying a decline of -132 points. The S&P index is down about -10 points currently
