Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims

This weeks Initial Unemployment Claims were better than forecast, but still not good.  Initial Unemployment Claims measures the number of people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time in  the prior week.  This week the forecast called for 388k, but the actual headline number came in at 385k.  Last weeks number of 397k was revised up to 401k creating a larger gap in released vs revised.  The 4 week moving average is still heading downward, currently at 393.25k using revised numbers.