Last week, when we reported last week's lucky Initial Claims expectations beat of 369K, we explicitly said the following [3]: "today's Initial Claims number which magically "beat" expectations by 1K, printing at 369K, on expectations of 370K, will be revised to a miss of 372K next week." And guess what last week's number was just revised to? That's right: 372K, which means that last week's beat was actually a miss. But who cares. Oh, and this week's just as manipulated print of 363K, which was a beat of expectations of 370K, will be spun as a 9K drop in initial claims of course. Next week this number will be revised to 365K-366K as usual, because the BLS has now upward revised its weekly claims number for something like 80 weeks in a row.
And for those curious why last week's number plunged to a pre-revision 369K from the ~390K print week before that, it was again, California's fault, which saw 16,586 fewer claims in the week ending October 20 due to "fewer layoffs in the service industry." To be expected: after all the administration has succeeded in reflating the subprime bubble, and every true-blooded Californian is once again a mortgage banker with a hungry Lamborghini to feed.
Finally, after dropping relentless every week, those Americans on extended claims/EUCs have somehow once again started rising, increasing by 47K in the week ending October 13. Perfect pre-election timing.