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Bottom Watch

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by Ryan Avent
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Apr 23 2009 8:52am EDT

Bottom Watch

Thursday is new jobless claim day, which means we get to see how we're performing on one particular bottom indicator. What we're looking for is a decline of 40,000 from peak for the four-week moving average. What did we get?

The number of Americans filing first- time applications for unemployment insurance rose last week to 640,000 as forecast, while total benefit rolls reached a new record, a sign companies remain in job-cutting mode.

Initial jobless claims increased by 27,000 in the week that ended April 18, from a revised 613,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The number of people staying on jobless benefit rose by 93,000 to 6.14 million, the 12th straight week the figure has set a record...

The four-week moving average of initial claims, a less volatile measure, fell to 646,750 from 651,000.

The average ticked down a bit for the second straight week, thanks primarily to last week's large decline. It's good that claims aren't increasing, but this is still really bad, and it ensures that the monthly report for April will be really bad.

Maybe next week the news will be better.

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