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Economy in Brief
U.S. Consumer Confidence Recovers During January
The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index increased 2.5% (-31.5% y/y) to 89.3 during January...
U.S. FHFA House Price Index Rose Further in November
The FHFA House Price Index increased 1.0% m/m in November...
U.S. Energy Prices Are Mixed
The price of regular gasoline rose to $2.39 per gallon (-4.5% y/y) in the week ended January 25...
U.K. Retail Survey Shows Extreme Weakness
The CBI U.K. retail volume survey shows dramatically weakened data for January and for the February outlook...
Texas Manufacturing Activity Weakens Further During January
The Dallas Fed reported that its Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey General Business Activity Index fell to 7.0 during January...
Viewpoints
Commentaries are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the views of Haver Analytics.
by Tom Moeller September 3, 2009
Initial
claims for unemployment insurance indicate that the labor market
improved just modestly. For last week, the Labor Department indicated
that claims fell a scant 4,000 to 570,000. Though the decline was the
second in a row, the average for last month rose slightly to 571,000
from 559,000 during July. A decline in weekly claims to 560,000 had
been expected.
The Labor Department indicated that the largest increases in initial claims for the week ending August 22 were in California (+8,632, +35.5% y/y), Ohio (+2,018, 52.5% y/y), New Hampshire (+1,237, +117.9% y/y), Wisconsin (+906, +58.0% y/y), and Minnesota (+664, +64.1% y/y), while the largest decreases were in Michigan (-2,968, +3.2% y/y), Florida (-1,653, +31.8% y/y), Pennsylvania (-1,288, +60.9% y/y), New Jersey (-1,271, -2.9% y/y), and Alabama (-1,266, +9.5% y/y).
Continuing claims for unemployment
insurance during the latest week rose and reversed most of the prior
period's decline. They remained down by nearly 10% from their late-June
high, a decline which probably owes to the exhaustion of benefits.
Continuing claims provide an indication of workers' ability to find
employment and the level of
6,234,000 claims is up sharply
from the year-ago level. The four-week average of
continuing claims fell modestly to 6,216,750, near the lowest since
late-April. The series dates back to 1966.
Extended benefits for unemployment insurance have risen sharply indicating that worker rehiring continued weak. Though they fell in the latest week, through mid-August extended benefits averaged 446,974 versus 416,630 during July.
The insured rate of unemployment ticked up to 4.7%, but that still was near the lowest level since mid-April. The rate reached a high of 5.2% during late-June. During the last ten years, there has been a 93% correlation between the level of the insured unemployment rate and the overall rate of unemployment published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The
highest insured unemployment rates in
the week ending August 15 were in Puerto Rico (7.3 percent), Oregon
(6.0), Pennsylvania (6.0), Nevada (5.7), Michigan (5.5), Wisconsin
(5.4), Connecticut (5.3), California (5.2), New Jersey (5.2), and North
Carolina (5.0). The lowest rates were in South Dakota (1.3) and North
Dakota (1.5), Virginia (2.4), Wyoming (2.8), Texas (2.9), Maine (3.0),
Colorado (3.2), Maryland (3.5), Minnesota (3.6), New York (4.2),
Mississippi (4.2), Georgia (4.2), and Florida (4.3).
The unemployment insurance claims data is available in Haver's WEEKLY database and the state data is in the REGIONW database.
The minutes from the latest FOMC meeting can be found here.
Unemployment Insurance (000s) | 08/29/09 | 08/22/09 | 08/15/09 | Y/Y | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Initial Claims | 570 | 574 | 580 | 26.7% | 420 | 321 | 313 |
Continuing Claims | -- | 6,234 | 6,142 | 80.9% | 3,342 | 2,552 | 2,459 |
Insured Unemployment Rate (%) | -- | 4.7 | 4.6 | 2.6 (08/2008) | 2.5 | 1.9 | 1.9 |