(Rachel Maddow Blog)
For the week ending June 23, seasonally adjusted initial claims for unemployment benefits clocked in at 386,000, the Department of Labor
reported Thursday. That was a decrease of 6,000 from the previous week's
revised figure of 392,000.
But the claims for the previous week were originally reported as 387,000. So the drop is considerably less than a first glance would indicate. Numbers for first-time claims have been revised upward for all but five of the past 32 weeks. The revisions are not a function of miscalculations but because all information comes from the states, and, for various reasons, those data often contain gaps when first reported.
The four-week moving average, which experts prefer because it flattens the volatility in the weekly figures, was 386,750, a decrease of 750 from the previous week's revised average of 387,500.
For all programs, including the federal emergency benefits that have been available to many jobless Americans since the Great Recession took hol, the total number of people claiming benefits for the week ending June 9 was 5,890,091, an increase of 71,724 from the previous week. Unless there is a sharp dip in the economy boosting unemployment claims, that total number of claimants will drop sharply over the next three months. That's in great part due to the budget deal made in February that is reducing the available weeks of unemployment by September in high-unemployment states from 99 to 73 weeks and 40 weeks in states where the unemployment rate is comparatively lower.