This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
First Time Unemployment Claims Increase But Less Than Usual
Courtesy of Lee Adler of the Wall Street Examiner
"Fewer people applied for unemployment benefits last week, a hopeful sign that the job market might be picking up," trumpeted the AP, in a news item picked up by news organizations across the US and the world. There's just one minor problem. First time claims actually increased by 9,361. The AP, and everybody else, reports a fictitious number, the seasonally smoothed fantasy. They do that because they figure that readers are too stupid to compare this week's performance with the same week in previous years to see if the economy is doing better or worse. I hold no such preconceived notion. If you are smart enough to be reading this report, then you are smart enough to be able to compare actual numbers, as opposed to the fake pablum spoon fed to you by the economics punditocracy.
Claims did indeed increase in the week ended October 29. The last week in October virtually always has an increase. But there is real, positive news in this. This week's increase was the smallest for the last week of October since the raging bubble year of 2005, when claims actually fell by nearly 8,800. But in the recovery years of 2003 and 2004, claims rose by 17,000 and 25,700. So this year looks good by that standard. Furthermore, this year's number is much better than last year's increase of 30,170, and way better than the recession years of 2008 and 2009, when 50,200 and 21,970 filed claims.
By any standard, last week's increase in claims was a good number for bulls. Of course, it's only a fraction of the story. It does not tell us how many people got jobs. It only tells us how many eligible workers lost their jobs.
Some analysts look at continued claims to get an idea of whether people got jobs. Continued claims fell by 16,000 in the week ended October 22. The problem with that number is that we don't know how much of that was due to folks leaving the rolls because they found jobs, and how much was due to exhaustion of benefits.
Wage withholding data, which is available daily, virtually in real time from the Treasury Department, suggests that the number of jobs overall is holding steady with little change year to year or month to month. That's not good, considering that population and the real labor force are growing.
The government will massage the unemployment rate it reports tomorrow. It will reduce the size of the labor force arbitrarily by dropping those who have temporarily given up on looking for a job. Total nonfarm payrolls are another story. They'll massage those numbers too, both through the seasonal adjustment, and the business birth-death adjustment. We will look at the actual, not seasonally adjusted numbers and compare them year to year to get an idea of the real trend.
The real wage withholding data, which I track in the weekly Professional Edition Treasury Report, and of which I will post an update later today, suggests that as of mid month when the BLS conducted its survey, there was a bump in real wage withholding to a gain of about 1% versus last year and last month. That's pretty typical for October, so after the gummit gets done with its seasonal hocus pocus, the reported fictitious jobs number could be somewhere near flat. Depending on whose survey you look at, the consensus calls for an increase in payrolls of 90-95,000. Given the real wage withholding data, I suspect that the seasonally adjusted number might come in light of that. The actual number should show a gain of 100-150,000.
However, the gains evaporated in the second half of the month. Regardless of what the reported number for October is, the reality is that the withholding data deteriorated in the last two weeks. If this trend isn't reversed, the November jobs number will come as a negative shock to the market.
Stay up to date with the machinations of the Fed, Treasury, Primary Dealers and foreign central banks in the US market, and get regular updates on the US housing market in the Wall Professional Edition, Money Liquidity, and Real Estate Package. Click this link to try WSE’s Professional Edition risk free for 30 days!
- ilene's blog
- 8362 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -




Have to go with a 9.2-9.3 On the UER today...mkts won't like it.
we are dealing with real scum bags heRe.
You lose your job
You get foreclosed
Then they have a party laughing at your plight.
It's a goddam disgrace
http://gawker.com/5854540/top-foreclosure-firm-threw-homeless+themed-hal...
I read the piece in that link and got physically ill. Seriously.
There is a special place in hell reserved for these f**kers.
i certainly hope the massive snowstorm in the northeast didn't skew the numbers?
nothings real anymore, it's all just pretense to cover their Federal ass's when the market appears to be going up too much. They don't want the people to ever reason why there is so much bad news yet the market still zooms up to record highs. They would rather like to sell you the garbage that the market is a leading indicator that the economy is getting better and the market is racing up because of it. The last thing they want anyone to know is that tax dollars are chasing this pig of a market up transferring money from 'us' to the hft robots run by the big banks and brokerage houses. All news is a scam to justify the Fed induced run up.
What bullshit. The print was 397,000 which is marginally below 400,000. Nowhere in that article does it tell you what the print was. Always beware when you are being propagandized. No matter by whom.
It doesn't matter what the "Print" was. What matters is the revision.
397K is probably 406K in a couple of weeks.
If there were any reporters whe deserved their jobs, they wouldn't get away with this.
If the statistical error is always in the same direction, its not an error, its a lie.
Most jobs I've had, I would've been fired for lying. I didn't work for government, though.
the print, the word, the truth. Take it and run with it because it beholds the honesty. There really were chemical factories and mobile anthrax units in Iraq, Colin Powel said so and had illustrations of them.
People who do not qualify for unemployment compensation should apply for unemployment compensation just so they can be counted as unemployed.
This should be an action the Occupy Wall Street movement should endorse and campaign to have all unemployed people apply online for benefits regardless if the qualify or not.
You are very good at your craft. A firt rate education I see from one of our better institutions. First you suggest something that would give you grounds to claim that the situation was "not that bad." e.g. the figures are being skewed by crazy people who are applyiing for unemployment benefits even when they don't need them. Then you go on to say, "This should be an action the Occupy Wall Street movement should endorse" thereby identifying the objects of the slander. However it's in two disconnected sentences which no mid or low level moron will have the critical thinking skills to evaluate, together, in context. It just conveys an impression. Thus you convey a calculated, totally false impression without saying anything improper or actually untrue. Do you really think people will hold you harmless on that basis? Do you actually believe that you are the only person who can talk this way? I'm not a legal scholar mind you I just care about when other people are causing me problems. I thought after the last time that this happened that we had an agreement not to do this? It turned out real badly. For you. Badly for everydody, but especially for you.
Lighten up Francis. He was recommending that unemployed people that exhausted their benefits and are no longer being counted in the jobless claims continue to apply. They've fallen of the cliff and are no longer visible to the BLS. If they filed for UE then even if the claims were rejected they would still show up on the jobless claims count, as they should.
Say what? Is there a point here? If so, what is it, please? In plain English, please.
Seems to me that you are attempting to do exactly what you are criticizing. The comment you point to seems perfectly logical to me. Then again, I don't have the benefit of an Ivey League education, and, with every passing day realize I must be a 'low level moron' without 'critical thinking skills' up to the task of evaluating sentences in context.
I'm glad all these bullshit government stats are so clear to you. Swell.
Not being eligible for unemployment benefits doesn't mean you don't need them. I am ineligible because I quit my job. My company was taken over by unethical people. As an officer of the company, I could not in good conscience stay on, nor would I take on the professional or reputational risk of being an officer in an unethical company. So I quit. Shortly afterward the economy blew up. Under my state regulations, I am not eligible for unemployment benefits because I quit rather than being fired or laid off.
Since I have never been on unemployment, I have never been counted in unemployment statistics.
So would my applying for benefits to be counted in statistics be a manipulation? Or is the data already being manipulated by my not being counted, when I am most definitely unemployed against my will?
And you are but one example of the countless out here.
How many small business owners have had to close and seek employment, but are not elegible to file for unemployment compensation?
How many more are hanging on, but taking little, if any, compensation while draining savings and/or retirement accounts as they work/hope/pray for a turn-around? How many struggle to keep their doors open, and meet a payroll, and keep their customer base, against ever greater odds?
Then, the government has the gall to even further massage the numbers to make things look better....month after month, year after year. What a joke this all has become.
Yea less people claiming unemployment must mean jobs are being made, yea right. It means that they have ran out of unemployment and are now trying to get SS for some sort of disability that they may or may not have and medicare saying they have no job or money. I would love to see if they measure any increase in Social Security or Medicare, I bet they do.
They will likely tie in the recent surge in consumer spending with the drop in claims-as proof of a recovery-all of which are bogus-
As money is freed up from non payment of mortgages and toys and people just giving up looking for work-they will spin it as positive when in fact the seed corn is being eaten by those two factors-
Not to worry. Once everyone is unemployed, new claims will fall to zero.
This great number can mean only one thing:
A huge ass revision next week.
When a body has bled to death from massive haemorrhage, the rate of loss slows to zero.
Thats fucking hilarious and true, two of my favorite things.
And CNBS will report that as 'bullish' as they log off for the last time, while SKYNET takes over the whole planet.
Thats fucking hilarious and true, two of my favorite things.
And CNBS will report that as 'bullish' as they log off for the last time, while SKYNET takes over the whole planet.
BUDDY ROEMER 2012!
there is a covert market influence behind it, it's worth more study.
http://expose2.wordpress.com
Using my Carnac the magnificient skills:
**holds link to forehead**
What are "outrageously naieve, paranoid delusions about muslims that are rooted in some sort of infantile racism and absolutely no other connection to objective reality."
How about that.