Xinhua News Agency | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images
Calling the state of the U.S. labor market stable today seems like an understatement given the latest data released by the Department of Labor.
Indeed, most of the past few weeks have shown that initial claims for unemployment benefits have fluctuated at all – if not zero.
In five of the last six weeks, the number of initial unemployment claims has stood at exactly 212,000. Given a labor force of 168 million, achieving such stasis seems unusual to say the least, if not strange, and yet this is what the figures published every Thursday morning since mid-March show.
This consistency has raised a few eyebrows on Wall Street. The only week that varied was March 30, with 222,000 people.
“How is this statistically possible? Five of the last six weeks, exactly the same number,” market veteran Jim Bianco, head of Bianco Research, said on X on Thursday.
“Initial unemployment insurance claims are state programs, with 50 state rules, hundreds of offices and 50 websites to file. Weather, seasonality, holidays and economic vibrations determine the number of people filing applications from week to week,” he added. “Yet this metric is so stable that it doesn’t even vary by 1,000 requests per week.”
Others also chimed in.
“Made up numbers,” said one participant in the thread, while another said: “Someone is fudging the books.”
However, others have offered more analytical thoughts, attributing the uniformity of the data to seasonal adjustments. Tracey Ryniec, a strategist at Zacks Investment Research, suggested: “You can look at each state Jim. These vary widely.”
Indeed, a Labor Department spokesperson noted that while the 212,000 print run on unemployment claims data is “rare,” it would not be considered abnormal.
This trend “can be reasonably interpreted as an indication that there has been very little volatility in initial claims during this period compared to historical trends, and that seasonal adjustment factors effectively remove seasonality from the overall numbers reported by states,” the official said. .
Additionally, unadjusted claims showed substantial fluctuations over the five-week period, recording figures of 202,722; 191,772; 193,921; 197,349; 215,265 and 208,509.
Federal Reserve officials are monitoring the weekly claims figures as part of their broader assessment of the labor market, which has shown surprising resilience as the central bank has tightened monetary policy.
The Labor Department official also pointed out that new seasonal factors in claims data were announced a month ago.
“Using the new seasonal adjustment factors, initial claims have been at a fairly consistent level since around mid-September 2023 and even more so since the beginning of February 2024,” the spokesperson said.
cnbc
