Initial Claims for Jobless Insurance Below Expectations

Initial claims for unemployment insurance dropped for the third consecutive period last week. The 5,000 person decline to 299,000 compared to Consensus expectations for 305,000 claims. It followed a 8,000 fall the prior week which was slightly less than initially estimated.

During the last ten years there has been a (negative) 75% correlation between the level of initial jobless insurance claims and the m/m change in payroll employment.

The four-week moving average of initial claims fell to 308,500 (-9.9% y/y).

Continuing claims for unemployment insurance fell a sharp 22,000 during the latest week following a revised decline of 1,000 the prior period, initially reported as an increase.

The insured rate of unemployment was stable at 1.9% for the seventh week.

The highest insured unemployment rates during the week ending March 18 were in Alaska (5.1%), Michigan (4.5%), Wisconsin (3.5%), Puerto Rico (3.4%), Pennsylvania (3.3%), Rhode Island (3.3%), New Jersey (3.1%), Vermont (3.1%), Massachusetts (3.0%), Connecticut (2.8%), and Oregon (2.8%).

Look Who's Working Now from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is available here.

The number of jobs in Israel increased 5,000 in January from December, seasonally adjusted, to 2.59 million, according to data reported today by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). The gain from a year ago was 79,000 jobs, or 2.9%. The CBS also publishes a subset of the jobs data that excludes foreign workers, mostly Palestinians. There were 82,000 of them in January, up from 70,000 a year ago. So the number of jobs covered by Israeli workers was 2.508 million, up just 1,000 from December and 2.7% from January 2005. Both the total number of jobs and those held by Israelis increased by 3.3% for 2005 as a whole.

The average job paid NIS7,232 for the month of January, about US$1,565. For jobs held by Israelis only, the comparable figure was NIS7,614, about US$1,648. In shekels, both total and Israeli wages were up 1.6% from a year ago. Taking account of inflation, "real" wages have fallen 1.3% for all workers and 1.0% for Israeli workers since January 2005.

While real purchasing power per job in Israel has stagnated over the last few years, the number of jobs themselves has advanced nicely. As we point out frequently here, employment in Europe is nearly at a standstill, and in the US, prior to the release tomorrow of March data, recent trends show roughly 1.5% gains in nonfarm payrolls, only about half the pace in Israel. So midst all the Middle East tension, the Israeli economy is presently able to increase jobs and overall growth as well. In industry data through Q4 2005, accommodation, trade and business services were seeing the greatest percentage job gains.