Estimates show U.S. jobless claims fell to around 215,000 last week

PANews reported on October 17th that initial jobless claims in the United States declined last week, based on analysis of unadjusted state-level claims data released during the US government shutdown. A Bloomberg analysis of the data indicates that initial claims were approximately 215,000 for the week ending October 11, down from an estimate of 234,000 the previous week. While the US Department of Labor has not released a weekly unemployment report since September 25th due to the government shutdown, it still provides downloadable data for most states. This estimate uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics' weekly seasonal adjustment coefficients, which are released in advance. This method closely matches the official seasonally adjusted data when data from all states is available. However, since the latest weekly data for Arizona, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Tennessee are missing, the average of the previous four weeks is used instead. Continuing claims rose slightly to 1.93 million in the week ending October 4th, higher than the 1.92 million estimated the previous week.