Improvement in Initial Unemployment Claims Continues to Slow

The flattening in the initial unemployment claims data continues to flatten. Last time we checked (last week), we found that while unemployment claims were dropping to the tune of 560 claims per day from January to November 2009, since then they had only been dropping at a rate of 133 claims per day.

Today’s unemployment claims news release tells us that last week’s data was nudged up to 463,000 (from 460,000), and that this week we’re enjoying 453,000 new filings. Here’s what the big picture looks like (as always, click on the graph to make it large and clear):

And here’s what happens if we split the data since the peak in claims at November 2009:

As I mentioned above, last week we found that, since November, unemployment claims had been falling at 133/day. Today’s data adjusts that to only 130/day. So the already-slow rate of improvement has slowed even more.

The President and his staff have been telling us how well the Stimulus spending has been working, but I think they’re living in the pre-November world. Since November, there hasn’t really been much good news on the unemployment claims front. Tomorrow we’ll get a look at the latest unemployment rate and see if there’s any good news there – predictions are that we’ll get a big boost in employment, but that 80% of it will be due to census hiring.