Last week’s sharp rise in new jobless claims looks ominous, but there’s a good reason to reserve judgment at this point. Recall that the previous weekly update in new filings for unemployment benefits tumbled dramatically to a new four-year low. But as several analysts warned, the fall was probably due to a seasonal factor linked to summer shutdowns of auto plants. Fast forward a week and it appears that the seasonal distortion has been effectively corrected. In sum: the latest reading on jobless claims (for the week through July 14) is more or less unchanged from the late-June figures, which implies that the roller coaster ride in the interim was a lot of noise about nothing.