Here is the opening statement from the Department of Labor:
In the week ending August 1, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 270,000, an increase of 3,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 267,000. The 4-week moving average was 268,250, a decrease of 6,500 from the previous week's unrevised average of 274,750.
There were no special factors impacting this week's initial claims. [See full report]
Today's seasonally adjusted 270K new claims was slightly above the Investing.com forecast of 273K.
The four-week moving average at 268,250 is almost 2K above the 15-year interim low set in mid-May.
Here is a close look at the data over the past few years (with a callout for the past year), which gives a clearer sense of the overall trend in relation to the last recession and the volatility in recent months.
As we can see, there's a good bit of volatility in this indicator, which is why the 4-week moving average (the highlighted number) is a more useful number than the weekly data. Here is the complete data series.
The headline Unemployment Insurance data is seasonally adjusted. What does the non-seasonally adjusted data look like? See the chart below, which clearly shows extreme volatility of the non-adjusted data (the red dots). The 4-week MA gives an indication of the recurring pattern of seasonal change (note, for example, those regular January spikes).
Because of the extreme volatility of the non-adjusted weekly data, we can add a 52-week moving average to give a better sense of the secular trends. The chart below also has a linear regression through the data. We can see that this metric continues to fall below the long-term trend stretching back to 1968.
Annual Comparisons
Here is a calendar-year overlay since 2009 using the 4-week moving average. The purpose is to compare the annual slopes since the peak in the spring of 2009.
For an analysis of unemployment claims as a percent of the labor force, see our recent commentary What Do Weekly Unemployment Claims Tell us About Recession Risk? Here is a snapshot from that analysis.
