Jobless Claims Hit Four-Month High: Increase 46K to 388K

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Curt ( 2 comments already! )

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John Nolte @ Big Government:

Now that Obama’s down 51-45% in the latest Gallup poll, maybe the bureaucrats behind the jobs numbers decided it no longer made sense to juice their results to benefit a president who might go down in flames? I kid. I kid. Kinda.

It was strange, though, to see last week’s jobless claims hit a four-year low right after a counter-intuitive drop in the September unemployment rate — all of this coming just weeks before a presidential election. But according to the corrupt media, only “truthers” dare question the government, so let’s just get to this week’s numbers:

Weekly applications for U.S. unemployment benefits jumped 46,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 388,000, the highest in four months. The increase represents a rebound from the previous week’s sharp drop. Both swings were largely due to technical factors.

The Labor Department says the four-week average of applications, a less volatile measure, fell slightly to 365,500, a level consistent with modest hiring.

Last week, California reported a large drop in applications, pushing down the overall figure to the lowest since February 2008.

This week, it reported a significant increase as it processed applications delayed from the previous week.

Oh, I see what happened. Through some crazy coincidence, the left-wing state of California which is run by a left-wing government and left-wing bureaucrats wasn’t able to process all of its unemployment claims just weeks before a presidential election and the week after that bizarre drop in unemployment. And as a result, a left-wing president in reelection trouble got quite the boost.

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Nan G

11 years ago

The Blaze has a slightly different take.

So much for last week’s aberration initial claims print of 339K (revised higher of course to 342K).
With expectations of an increase to 365K, the DOL just came out with a whopper of a miss, the largest in three months, at 388K, an increase of 46K in one week, which was also the highest print in three months.
Remember: this number will be revised to 391K next week.
So much for single print indicative of a recovery.
As the chart below shows, the rate of change was a 13.45% from last week: the highest in five years!
So far, there has been no explanation from the BLS or DOL for last week’s outlier print.
And no, last week’s print was not due to California, which the DOL reported just decreased by 4,979 in the week ended Oct 6, not the required 49K.
What is however worse, is that it is becoming increasingly clear that nobody at the DOL knows what is actually going on following a statement by the Labor Dept that “it appeared that state-level administrative issues were distorting the data”, and numbers are simply picked out of thin air.
Finally, in truly amusing news, those on Extended Benefits have once again started to rise, after dropping to virtually 0 following expiration of state benefits.

Four charts follow this story.
All tell extremely interesting tales.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-18/realty-storms-back-initial-claims-explode-higher-46k-last-weeks-upward-revised-aberr

But it did serve one purpose, that aberration last week.
It took some ammunition away from Paul Ryan during his debate with VP Joe Biden.

EDITED TO ADD:
Another fine chart.
This one from on 10/11/2012
shows the difference between Obama’s 2012 weekly jobs claims numbers in the initial headlines VS their revisions later…..VERY SCARY!
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2012/10/claims_0.jpg

another vet

11 years ago

This is a strong indication that this month’s reported unemployment rate will drop to 7.5% or lower.