U.S. Unemployment Insurance Claims Ease in Latest Week
by:Tom Moeller
|in:Economy in Brief
Summary
- Initial claims decline, reversing earlier increase.
- Continuing claims move lower.
- State unemployment rates vary.
Initial claims for unemployment insurance, calculated by Haver Analytics by summing state claims, declined 14,839 to 220,271 in the week ended October 11. The decline reversed earlier week’s increase of 10,841 and left claims at the lowest level since late-July. Nevertheless, initial claims have trended higher this year after weakening late in 2024, suggesting some softening in the job market since the beginning of the year.
Continuing claims for unemployment insurance, also calculated by Haver Analytics by summing state claims, fell to 1.928 million in the week ended October 4 after rising to 1.929 million in the prior week. Their trend tells the same story as initial claims; that is, labor market conditions are uneven. Still, continuing claims have risen 3.1% y/y, which is less than half the peak rate of 7.7% this past April.
The insured unemployment rate varied greatly across individual states and territories. In the week ended October 4, the highest unemployment rates were in New Jersey (2.415%), Washington (1.96%) and Connecticut (1.71%). The lowest were in South Dakota (0.23%), Florida (0.36%), and North Carolina (0.41%). Rates in other notable states include New York (1.45%), Illinois (1.48%), Pennsylvania (1.37%), and Texas (1.05%). These state data are not seasonally adjusted.
Data on weekly unemployment claims are from the Department of Labor itself, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They begin in 1967 and are contained in Haver’s WEEKLY database and summarized monthly in USECON. Data for individual states are in REGIONW back to December 1986. The expectations figure is from the Action Economics Forecast Survey in the AS1REPNA database.
Tom Moeller
AuthorMore in Author Profile »Prior to joining Haver Analytics in 2000, Mr. Moeller worked as the Economist at Chancellor Capital Management from 1985 to 1999. There, he developed comprehensive economic forecasts and interpreted economic data for equity and fixed income portfolio managers. Also at Chancellor, Mr. Moeller worked as an equity analyst and was responsible for researching and rating companies in the economically sensitive automobile and housing industries for investment in Chancellor’s equity portfolio. Prior to joining Chancellor, Mr. Moeller was an Economist at Citibank from 1979 to 1984. He also analyzed pricing behavior in the metals industry for the Council on Wage and Price Stability in Washington, D.C. In 1999, Mr. Moeller received the award for most accurate forecast from the Forecasters' Club of New York. From 1990 to 1992 he was President of the New York Association for Business Economists. Mr. Moeller earned an M.B.A. in Finance from Fordham University, where he graduated in 1987. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from George Washington University.
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