Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims

A shocker in the initial claims this week.  Initial unemployment claims is the number of people that filed for unemployment for the first time in the prior week.  This is an important indicator as it foreshadows the rate of unemployment and is an overall indicator of the health of our economy that ripples in the economy by effecting consumer spending, retail sales, savings rate and more.  The forecast called for 454k, but the actual headline number was 452k (this was not the shocker, read on).

The shocker was that last weeks number of 462k was revised to 475k and was the biggest revision we have seen in the past few years.  This is really starting to look like the headline numbers are being announced lower on purpose (manipulated) to make it look better and silently the revisions are made to the real number.  

Take a look at the graph above "Delta in Actual vs. Revised" I think that tells the story.  The spin they put on this currently, is that we improved 23,000 jobs this week (vs. last weeks revision).  That remains to be seen, if the delta next week just hits half this weeks, we are in for a big revision.  As always only pay attention to the revisions, it is the closest to the truth your going to get.  Although this graph only shows this years revision delta, upon creating this data I researched further back and the delta was mostly at zero with small fluctuations, this years actions have been the largest fluctuations in a few years.