Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims

The weekly Initial Unemployment Claims came out today.  Initial Claims is the number of people that filed for unemployment benefits for the first time in the prior week.  The forecast was for 458K and the actual headline number of 453k.  The prior weeks number of 465k was revised to 469k (a 4k increase over the headline number), making this weeks number a 16k improvement (but we'll know for sure once this weeks revisions are in).  With more layoffs in the financial industry ahead, it should be interesting what happens over the next few months with initial claims.

The delta between actual and revised continues to be wide, a phenomena that seems to be specific to 2009 and 2010 (prior years delta was less and numbers more accurate, go figure).