The continued good news in this Thursday morning’s jobless claims report is that the trend of “less worse” news is intact. But the improvement has slowed dramatically and is still at a level of about 150,000 higher than the worst weekly levels of the Great Recession.
On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims rose (slightly) by 7,591 from their pandemic low last week to 833,352. After seasonal adjustment (which is far less important than usual at this time), claims declined by 130,000 to 881,000, their “best” reading since the pandemic began. The 4-week moving average also declined to a new pandemic low of 991,750, its first reading under 1 million:
Continuing claims, on both an unadjusted and seasonally adjusted basis also continued to decline to new pandemic lows, by 765,644 to 13,104,366, and by 1,238,000 to 13,254,000 respectively: