With all eyes increasingly focused on employment trends, this morning’s update on new filings for jobless benefits was a disappointment–a disappointment in the sense that it didn’t tell us anything new that wasn’t already apparent.
Initial jobless claims rose a slight 4,000 to 319,000 (see chart below) for the week through September 8, the Labor Department reported today. Yes, that’s not the direction the optimists are looking for. But as smoking guns go, it’s mostly a dud.
Further complicating the search for clarity, the four-week moving average of jobless claims declined slightly through September 8, as the second chart below illustrates.
What can we distill from the latest numbers? Not much. Yes, the reported trend in jobless claims gives no compelling reason to think that a stealth boom is about to explode. On the other hand, the pessimism that reverberates from last Friday’s August employment report isn’t yet confirmed in the initial jobless claims. That doesn’t mean that confirmation isn’t coming. But for the moment, there’s no obvious statistical sign in this morning’s report that the labor market’s poised for an imminent and dramatic turn for the worse. The future, it seems, may take its own sweet time in arriving, frustrating those of us in need of instant satisfaction.