August 03, 2012
It used to be common for stories in the business press to make a big deal out of the weekly unemployment insurance claims numbers. And, it used to be common for me to beat up on them for exaggerating the importance of a weekly number that is highly erratic and subject to large revisions.
On the other hand, these numbers do provide information, especially when we see a trend over a number of weeks. That has been the case in the last five weeks as the average weekly claims number reached a recovery low.
For some reason the media no longer seems to be paying attention to these numbers. If they were, then they would not have been surprised by the 163,000 job growth reported for July.
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