Comments on: Unemployment claims lowest in 15 months

By: Edward Harrison

Edward Harrison — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:36:00 +0000

Sorry for the late response. I’m not sure I buy his logic. Perhaps the unemployment rate understates joblessness. But layoffs in jobless claims are being overstated by seasonal adjustments in my opinion.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:09:00 +0000

Adding to Brick’s comments…

Edward, you said:
“All of the numbers above are seasonally-adjusted data. But, I tend to think they overstate the number of job losses (this particular point puts me somewhat at odds with David Rosenberg). My reason is simple: we are in the recovery part of the business cycle, which means that any seasonal adjustment bias will tend to elevate the numbers.”

Edward, what do you make of John Mauldin’s opposing view that the government “seasonally adjusted” jobless claims number understates the real number of new jobless claims? See his post from this past Friday at http://www.2000wave.com/article.asp?id=mwo112809.

This is a fascinating discussion and worth some additional back-and-forth argument and asking of devil’s advocate-type questions.

By: Brick

Brick — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:27:00 +0000

unadjusted, totaled 543,926 in the week ending Nov. 21, an increase of 68,080 from the previous week.
unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,070,712, an increase of 187,642 from the preceding week.

The seasonal adjustment last week was roughly -25000 this week the seasonal adjustment was +83000.
Conversely last week the unemployment rate was boosted by 800000 and this week was reduced by 350000.

My guess is that there is some statistical wonkiness with too much bias on last years figures. Most telling is the comments with the most positive being ‘Fewer Layoffs’.