Jobless Claims Post Largest Weekly Drop Since July
Thursday, October 11, 2012 at 08:42AM Initial jobless claims for the latest week dropped by 30K from 369K down to 339K for the largest weekly drop since July 20th. It was also the lowest weekly reading since January 2008.
Due to this week's decline, the four-week moving average also saw a large drop, falling from 375.5K down to 364K. This is now just 1K above the post recession low of 363K. It has now been 28 weeks since the four-week average of jobless claims made their last post-recession low in March, which is the second longest streak of the recovery. The longest streak, coincidentally, occurred from March to October of last year.
On a non-seasonally adjusted basis (NSA), jobless claims actually rose by 26K to 327.1K, but this is common for the first week of October where jobless claims on an NSA basis typically do rise. For the current week, NSA claims are at their lowest level since the first week of October 2007, and they're well below the historical average of 372K for the current week going back to 2000.
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