Jobless Claims Swung in the Second Week of Third Quarter

By TJ Kim – Bondsquawk

October 18, 2012

Initial Jobless Claims edged up to 388K. The survey expected this week’s claims to be at 365K. However, Continuing Claims improved by sizing down to 3252K from 3273K.

According to Econoday, this week’s jump in Initial Jobless Claims is attributable to California’s employment situation.

“Seasonal adjustments expected that California, as it usually does, would report a jump in claims at the beginning of the quarter. Instead, the jump happened the second week. This is a major factor behind violent swings in weekly jobless claims, up 46,000 in the October 13 week after dropping a revised 27,000 in the prior week.”

Normally, a seasonal jump in Initial Jobless Claims occurs in the first week of each quarter. However, for the third quarter, as seen from today’s data, a seasonal jump was in the second week. Shobhana Chandra from Bloomberg wrote,

“The typical pattern of large increases in unadjusted claims at the start of the quarter seems to have shifted by a week in one state, causing the adjusted data to become volatile, a Labor Department spokesman said as the figures were released to the press.”

The four-week moving average of Initial Claims, a less volatile measure, increased moderately to 365,500 from 364,750.

Original post can be found here!

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