I could point everyone to last week's post, or even the week before and instruct you all to just change the numbers ever so slightly, but Brad DeLong took the time to adjust the figures this morning, so he get's the prize (via Atrios.)
Here's a visual for all those who, like me, like to have all the Administration's gyrations put together in one place:
Week Ending | Preliminary New Claims | "Revised" New Claims | Revised From | Reported Change | De Facto Change |
| October 25 | 386 | 391 | 386 | -5000 | 0 |
| October 18 | 386 | 390 | 384 | -4000 | +2000 |
| October 11 | 384 | 388 | 382 | -4000 | +2000 |
| October 4 | 382 | 405 | 399 | -23,000 | -17,000* |
| September 27 | 399 | 386 | 381 | +13,000 | +18,000* |
The steep increase and drop in late September/early October represent the fluxuations caused by Hurricane Isabel (*), which when put together, appear to be mostly a wash (no pun intended.) But I included those weeks, as it's quite interesting that the "revised" numbers of the last week of September are the same as today's preliminary, but still below today's revised. Thus, despite the reporting of the past month that numbers just continue to go down, in fact, they haven't at all.
I've started training for a part-time job this week, and so missed the initial DOL release this morning (called my spouse during break to get the basic numbers), but after taking a longer look this afternoon, noticed something else which doesn't bode well:
The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Oct. 18 was 3,566,000, an increase of 57,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,509,000.
The number dropped significantly last week, but bounded right back up this week, plus some, so I'm not yet convinced that we're seeing much progress on the employment front.
Posted by MB Williams at October 30, 2003 04:33 PM
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10/16: http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/eta2003552.htm
10/23: http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/eta2003569.htm
10/30: http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/current.htm
This from Krugman's Times column today
"The big question, of course, is jobs. Despite all that growth in the third quarter, the number of jobs actually fell. And new claims for unemployment insurance, a leading indicator for the job market, still show no sign of a hiring boom. (By the way, for the last month there's been a peculiar pattern: each week, headlines declare that new claims fell from the previous week; a week later, the past week's number is revised upward, and the apparent decline disappears.)"
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/31/opinion/31KRUG.html
Posted by: mth at October 31, 2003 08:47 AM