WASHINGTON — Initial claims for U.S. state unemployment benefits fell by 5,000 to 330,000 in the January 19 week, a surprise decline that marks the lowest point in exactly 5 years, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
Forecasts in a MNI survey of economists had centered around a rebound in jobless claims to 364,000. The initially reported 335,000 claims level for the January 12 employment survey week was unrevised.
A Labor Department analyst said that there were three states that had estimated data in the current week due to the holiday-shortened reporting period. Two of those states, California and Virginia, reported their own estimates, though California only provided a partial estimate. The Labor Department itself estimate initial claims for the third state, which was Hawaii.
Seasonal adjustment factors expected unadjusted claims to fall by 20.3% or 113,000 in the January 19 week after hitting their usual yearly high in the previous week. Instead, unadjusted claims fell 21.5% or 119,944 to 436,766. This is slightly ahead of the 416,880 level reported in the comparable week a year earlier.
The state data released for the January 12 week indicated unadjusted initial claims increased in 32 states and declined in 21 states, with no states unchanged. The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands are included in this data.
The initial claims seasonally adjusted 4-week moving average was 351,750 in the January 19 week, a decrease of 8,250 from the previous week and the lowest level since the March 8, 2008 week, when it was 346,500.
The level of continuing claims came in at 3.157 million after seasonal adjustment in the January 12 employment survey week, a decrease of 71,000 from the previous week. Continuing claims were at a level of 3.206 million in the December 15 employment survey week.
The level of unadjusted continuing claims fell by 177,080 to 3,690,615 in the week and remains below the 4,069,651 level in the comparable week a year ago.
The seasonally adjusted insured unemployment was unchanged at 2.5% in the January 12 week and is still below the seasonally adjusted 2.8% rate in the comparable week a year earlier.
The unemployment rate among the insured labor force is well below that reported monthly by the Labor Department because claims are approved for the most part only for job losers, not the job leavers and labor force reentrants included in the monthly report.
The Labor Department said that the level of unadjusted Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits claims fell by 365,641 in the January 5 week, bringing that category's total to 1,693,797.
Extended benefits claims rose by a mere 54 to 1,197 in the January 5 week, still running off the final workers as the program has ended.
The Labor Department reported that a total of 5,659,760 persons claimed unemployment benefits in the January 5 week, a decrease of 214,076 from the previous week and still below the 7,670,108 persons in the comparable week a year ago. These data are not seasonally adjusted, and include regular state claims, federal employee claims, new veterans claims, the EUC and extended benefits programs, state additional benefits, and STC/Workshare claims.
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