In perhaps the most boring initial claims release in a long time, the DOL revealed that in the week ending April 13, there were 352,000 new unemployment insurance claims, an increase of 4,000 from the prior week (naturally revised higher from 346K to 348K), and a slight miss of expectations of 350K. So far in 2013, there have been 8 misses and 7 beats of the expected claims number. The DOL also added that two states' claims were estimated in the past week: of course, if these were California and Illinois, one would imagine reality to be quite different than what is reported but who really cares about reality any more.
[8]
Continuing claims were slightly better than expected, at 3068K, vs 3075K expected, a drop from the upward revised 3103K (from 3079K). Also boring. The only ongoing curiosity remains the epic weekly volatility in the Emergency/Extended Claims number, which in the past week plunged by 55K, and whose chart continues to look like a harmonic oscilator, i.e., yoyo.
[9]
Finally, normalizing for the now traditional revision of the past week's number, here is what a continuous series of claims would look like courtesy of John Lohman, if using the as reported weekly number versus its subsequent weekly downward revision.
[10]