Jobless Claims Jump: Bad News for Republicans?
More news that Republicans didn''t want to see heading into next Tuesday's mid-term elections. The U.S. Department of Labor just reported that the number of unemployment claims jumped by 18,000 last week, a number that exceeded the expectations of most analysts. To put that number into context, the total number of U.S. workers who last week applied for jobless benefits was 327,000, the highest since the week of July 8th when they were 334,000.
Wall Street forecasted claims of 310,000, which would have meant an increase in jobless claims of a mere 1,000 workers. We all know that more than anything else, Wall Street hates surprises. So don't be surprised to see some volatility in the stock market today.
The Labor Department report also included some more bad news along with some good news. The additional bad news was that the four-week moving average, which is more representative gauge of underlying employment trends, jumped from 305,500 the previous week to 311,250 this week.
On a positive note, the number of workers who were drawing jobless benefits but no longer are declined by 27,000 to 2.4 million in the week ending Saturday, October 21st, which was the most recent week for which data was available. This was the lowest level of continued claims since the week of June 17th and was on target with Wall Street's forecast.
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