Initial claims rose very marginally week over week (with the declining trend of early 2013 now over); continung claims rose more - considerably more than expectations - with its biggest 7-week rise since early 2009 to the highest in 6 months; but the major news is the drop in Emergency Unemployment Compensation beneficiaries from 1.37 million to (drum roll please) zero! Congress decision not to extend this beenfit means there are 2 million fewer people on benefits than a year ago. The 1.4 million drop also means the number of people NOT in the labor force is about to rise by the same amount, which as we explained before [5], means the US unemployment rate is about to drop by up to 0.8%, which means the January unemployment rate could be as low as 5.9%.
Emergency claims recipients dropped to zero...
As continuing claims rose by the most (over the last 7 weeks) since 2009... to the highest in six months
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending January 4 was 3,706,087, a decrease of 1,003,734 from the previous week. There were 5,659,482 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2013.


