Weekly Jobless Claims Heading the Wrong Way

Thursday's economic report calendar seemed to be good when you consider that the decline in durable goods was better than expected, but the Labor Department has released a skunk of a report on the weekly jobless claims.

Weekly jobless claims rose by 14,000 to 348,000 in the past week. Dow Jones and Bloomberg were both calling for 335,000. The prior week's report was revised to 334,000 from 336,000, an unusual decline in the revision.

Continuing claims, the army of unemployed (with a one-week lag), rose by 8,000 to 2,964,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Hopefully weather was some part of the report, but how many weeks can people say they did not go look for work or that they got laid off because of the weather? Still, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that no special factors had an impact on the report.

Thursday's report may weaken some expectations for the unemployment and payrolls report due in eight days. At least durable goods may have balanced this impact.

Filed under: Jobs