Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims

This week the Initial Unemployment Claims, which measures the number of persons who filed for unemployment benefits for the first time, was worse than forecasted (as always).  The forecasted number was 394k and the actual headline number came in at 403k.  I make the distinction of headline number as it is the first release of the number, unfortunately the one most paid attention too (instead of the revised number).  Last weeks number was revised up from 412k to 416k edging the delta to 4k from last weeks 3k.   Given this, we can possibly expect revisions for this weeks number to be conservatively 406k.   The 4 week moving average moved up from 391k to 396k which shows a trend higher for the past few weeks.