My weekly updates on Initial Unemployment Claims have been a broken record for many months. This week is nothing new. It was another record low. The headline, fictional, seasonally adjusted (SA) number of initial unemployment claims for last week came in at 270,000. The Wall Street economist crowd consensus guess was almost right on the mark this week, at 271,000.

We focus on the trend of the actual data Instead of the seasonally manipulated headline number expectations game. Facts tend to be more useful than the economic establishment's favored fictitious numbers. Actual claims based on state by state filings were 225,090, which is another record low for this calendar week. It continues a nearly uninterrupted string of record lows that began in September 2013. But there's a conundrum inherent in these numbers, because withholding tax collections have collapsed in recent weeks. How can that be, and what does it portend?

The Department of Labor (DoL) reports the unmanipulated numbers that state unemployment offices actually count and report each week. This week it said, “The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 225,090 in the week ending August 1, a decrease of 5,133 (or -2.2 percent) from the previous week. The seasonal factors had expected a decrease of 7,745 (or -3.4 percent) from the previous week. There were 247,877 initial claims in the comparable week in 2014. ”

 Initial Claims and Annual Rate of Change

You can see for yourself from the chart just how extraordinarily low these numbers are.

When using actual data we want to see if there's any evidence of trend change. Thus we look at how the current week compares with this week in prior years, and whether there's any sign of change. The actual change for the current week was a decrease of -5,000 (rounded). The July-August turn is a mixed week, sometimes down, sometimes up.  Based on the data for this week from the last 10 years, the current decline middling, a little weaker than last year (-10,000), but better than an increase of 7,000 in 2013.