Recall what we said less than an hour ago [8]: "what will most likely happen is a print in the mid to upper 380,000s, while last week's number will be revised to a 390K+ print, allowing the media to once again declare that the number was an improvement week over week. In other words, SSDD." SSDD it is: last week's 386K number was revised to 389K, meaning the massive miss relative to expectations of 370K last week just got even worse. This is the 10th week in a row of misses to the weaker side and the 16th of the last 18. And while this week's miss was whopping as usual, with expectations of 375K being soundly missed after the print came at 388K on its way back to 400K, the media can sleep soundly because the absolute lack of BLS propaganda means that the sequential progression is one of, you got it, improvement. In other words here is what the headlines in the Mainstream Media will be: "Initial claims improve over prior week." In fact here it is from Bloomberg: "U.S. Initial Jobless Claims Fell 1,000 to 388,000 Last Week." Absolutely brilliant.No propaganda. No data fudging. No manipulation at all. Just endless laughter at the desperation.
As the lower pane shows, 16 of the last 18 weeks has seen misses to the upside (worse) for claims are at the year's highs...
[9]
Our aggregate measure of all claims has now risen gently for the last month...
[10]
and the 4-week average of claims is now the highest of the year and has risen the most since May of last year in the last 3 weeks...
[11]
In addition, as we warned last week, the 99-wee cliff is starting to affect more and more people, and while 60K total dropped off EUCs and extended claims and are thus permanently off the government dole (in the process reducing the labor force as well and lowering the unemployment rate), this number will hit a combined total by June as the cliff hits nearly 3/4 of a million people.This is about $10 billion in lost purchasing power for the year.
Finally, for C-Grade "disruptive" HuffPo lites out there, here is what propaganda looks like pure and simple: presenting the presidential year claims revisions, courtesy of John Lohman.
So, once again, where is the recovery? In the manipulated data? Or the quality of the hopium spewed forth by the pro-administration media?
Our only question is whether the recently unemployed Colombian hookers made US initial claims last week.