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Weekly Unemployment Claims Take a Little Dip

Feb. 7, 2013 8:40am Becket Adams

Good morning, Blazers. Here’s your weekly unemployment claims report.

Applications for jobless benefits fell by 5,000 for the week ending February 2, bringing the total to 366,000, down from last week’s revised figure of 371,000, the Labor Department announced on Thursday.

The four-week moving average, a “less volatile” figure, decreased by 2,250, bringing the total to 350,500, down from last week’s revised average of 352,750.

“The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.5 percent for the week ending January 26, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate,” the report reads.

“The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending January 26 was 3,224,000, an increase of 8,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 3,216,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,211,000, an increase of 13,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 3,197,250,” it adds.

The states with the largest increases in initial claims for the week ending January 19 were North Carolina (+2,030), Oregon (+491), Virginia (+461), and Vermont (+62).

Meanwhile, California (-20,414), Texas (-5,082), Illinois (-4,865), Florida (-3,570), and Michigan (-2,795) posted the biggest decreases in initial claims.

Employers added roughly 157,000 jobs in January.

“And annual revisions included in the Labor Department’s January employment report showed the economy created 600,000 more jobs in 2011 and 2012 than previously thought,” The Associated Press notes.

But let’s keep everything in perspective: The unemployment rate also ticked up to 7.9 percent in January from 7.8 percent in December.

Hopefully, according to some economists, the unemployment rate will come back down if hiring continues at this modest clip.

Follow Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) on Twitter

Front page photo courtesy Getty Images.

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Comments (7)

anthonyi
Posted on February 9, 2013 at 11:14pm
I can’t take these unemployment reports any more! Up a point down a point! Its probably much higher than what they are saying any way. As Beck says Entrepreneurship is what will fix this.
http://bit.ly/mustreadbookofthisgeneration

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NigelTufnel
Posted on February 7, 2013 at 1:27pm
Boring! Everyone knows the unemployment rate is volatile as there are many variables that determine it. The astonishing part is that Bernanke has hinged his Fed Policy to it. It’s the dumbest economic idea in the history of economics yet no one has called him on it. So now we have a bad economic policy hinged to a bogus number. The stupidity rages on!

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showmerancher
Posted on February 7, 2013 at 9:09am
I’m not sure why this is news every week. Oh Boy! The unemployment number went down! No it didn’t. Last week it was reported as 366,000 the same as this week. But before today’s number came out, they revised last week’s number up to 371,000, thus they can say that it went down from last week. But that’s comparing last week’s revised number to this week’s unrevised number, which will invariably go up before we get next week’s number.

I think a really interesting story would be to go back two years, and get the unemployment number for a week. Then, only go by the “reported” number of decrease (most) or increase (some), and do the math on that starting number. Do NOT take into account the “revised” numbers. I think we’d find that the number of new applicants for unemployment (based only on initially reported numbers) would be a huge NEGATIVE number by now.

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ICSPADES
Posted on February 7, 2013 at 9:02am
Never been unemployed in my life. I started at 11 years old shining shoes and never have been without a job until this week. My company eliminated my position and went with a contractor to do the job. At 51 years old I am sure it will be tough to start again but I will do whatever I need to do. I was a hell of a shoeshine boy at one time so if you see a middle aged man on the street trying to make it shining shoes, stop by and find out their story.You could be the next statistic in this world of greed.

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- NigelTufnel
  Posted on February 7, 2013 at 1:46pm
  Don’t sell yourself short. I went through it at 35. Fortuneately I was only out of work for 6 weeks. Use the time to re-discover yourself a little. If you have to, try to find a good part-time job that allows you enough time to job-hunt. With 99 weeks of unemployment it’s easy to just slide on the dole. Trust me. You don’t want 2 years of missing time on your resume. You will lose a lot of credit with potential employers. Take two weeks off. Sleep in. Excersise. Come up with a game plan. At 51 I’m guessing your soc. sec. draw date is around 64?. If so you need 13 more solid years of employment. I fixed a lot of things around the house that I normally would have paid someone to do so there are some ways to take advantage of your time off. But I would take something after 6 months even if you know you won’t like it.
  
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JACKTHETOAD
Posted on February 7, 2013 at 8:54am
It must be warm there. It’s too cold for a dip here.

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woodyee
Posted on February 7, 2013 at 8:53am
IMPOSSIBLE! Why, just last week, Obammy said he’d created SIX MILLION JOBS in the last 35 months!

BLAZE, sounds like your trolling for Liberals! (sarc)

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