The latest weekly jobless claims data remains on trend, declining at an annual rate around -9%. In spite of the recent stock price correction stocks remain dangerously extended relative to the improvement in the jobs picture.
The Labor Department reported that the seasonally adjusted (SA) representation of first time claims for unemployment fell by 5,000 to 343,000 from a revised 348,000 (was 346,000) in the advance report for the week ended June 29, 2013. The consensus estimate of economists of 348,000 for the SA headline number was slightly too high (see footnote 1).
The headline seasonally adjusted data is the only data the media reports but the Department of Labor (DOL) also reports the actual data, not seasonally adjusted (NSA). The DOL said in the current press release, “The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 333,920 in the week ending June 29, a decrease of 2,595 from the previous week. There were 369,826 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012 .” [Added emphasis mine] See footnote 2.
The advance report is usually revised up by from 1,000 to 4,000 in the following week, when all interstate claims have been counted. Last week’s number was approximately 1,500 shy of the final number for that week released Wednesday. For purposes of this analysis, I adjusted this week’s reported number up by 1,500. The adjusted number that I used in the data calculations and charts for this week is 335,000 rounded. It won’t matter that it’s a thousand or two either way in the final count next week. The differences are essentially rounding errors, invisible on the chart.
The actual filings last week represented a decrease of 9.3% versus the corresponding week last year. That’s essentially the same as the 9.2% drop the week before. The average year to year improvement of the past 2 years is -8.3%, but the range is from near zero to -20%. The year to year comparisons are now much tougher as the number of job losses declined sharply between 2009 and 2012.
The current week to week change in the NSA number is a decline of 1,000. The current weekly change compares with an average change of an increase of 6,000 for the comparable week over the prior 10 years. Last year’s comparable week had a decrease of less than 1,000. The current performance is about the same as this week last year, and better than the 10 year average.
Looking at the big picture, this week’s data is absolutely in line with the trend.
Initial Unemployment Claims – Click to enlarge
The correlation of the broad trends of claims with the trend of stock prices over the longer term is strong. It is most visible when the claims trend is plotted on an inverse scale with stock prices on a normal scale.
Initial Unemployment Claims and Stock Prices- Click to enlarge
Stock prices were running with the initial claims trend until the Fed started QE3 and 4 late last year, causing the stock price rise to accelerate. The Fed’s QE3-4 money printing campaign has had far more success in creating a stock market bubble, which was one of Bernanke’s stated goals (in slightly different words) than in driving economic growth, where arguably, it has done nothing. The stock market appeared to be in parabolic blowoff mode by February as a result of the excess liquidity. It reached at least a temporary limit in May.
Central Banks and Securities Prices- Click to enlarge
When the market reached the top of the trend channel in May, it was ripe for a correction. Now that that has happened, there’s again a chance that stock prices will decouple completely from economic indicators as long as the Fed ( joined by the BoJ) keeps cashing out the Primary Dealers every month via QE3-4. But the days of whine and poses are numbered.
Bernanke and his sycophants have sown tremendous confusion about when they will end QE, a reflection of their own confusion. As I wrote in the Fed Report this week, the Fed now faces a situation where it will have no choice but to cut back on QE in the months ahead. Meanwhile in other corners of the world central bank balance sheets are going the other way and in China a massive wave of liquidation has also destroyed fictitious capital in the West (see US and Japan Pump It, Chinese Dam It and Suck, And Europe Sullenly Suffers Shrinkage) . So the market is probably in the final phase of the bubble.
More charts below.
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Footnote 1: Economists adjust their forecasts based on the previous week’s number, leading to them frequently getting whipsawed. Reporters frame it as the economy missing or beating the estimates, but it’s really the economic forecasters who are missing. The economy is what it is.
The market’s focus on whether the forecasters have made a good guess or not is nuts. Aside from the fact that economic forecasting is a combination of idolatrous religion and prostitution, the seasonally adjusted number, being made-up, is virtually impossible to consistently guess (see endnote). Even the actual numbers can’t be guessed to the degree of accuracy that the headline writers would have you believe is possible.
Footnote 2: There is no way to know whether the SA number is misleading or a reasonably accurate representation of the trend unless we are also looking at charts of the actual data. And if we look at the actual data using the tools of technical analysis to view the trend, then there’s no reason to be looking at a bunch of made up crap, which is what the seasonally adjusted data is. Seasonal adjustment just confuses the issue.
Seasonally adjusted numbers are fictional and are not finalized until 5 years after the fact. There are annual revisions that attempt to accurately reflect what actually happened this week. The weekly numbers are essentially worthless for comparative analytical purposes because they are so noisy. Seasonally adjusted noise is still noise. It’s just smoother. So economists are fishing in the dark for a fictitious number that is all but impossible to guess. But when they are persistently wrong in one direction, it shows that their models have a bias. Since the third quarter of 2012, with a few exceptions it has appeared that a pessimism bias was built in to their estimates.
To avoid the confusion inherent in the fictitious SA data, I work with only the actual, not seasonally adjusted (NSA) data. It is a simple matter to extract the trend from the actual data and compare the latest week’s actual performance to the trend, to last year, and to the average performance for the week over the prior 10 years. It’s easy to see graphically whether the trend is accelerating, decelerating, or about the same.
The advance number for the most recent week is normally a little short of the final number the week after the advance report, because the advance number does not include all interstate claims. The revisions are minor and consistent however, so it is easy to adjust for them. Unlike the SA data, after the second week, they are never subsequently revised.
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Initial Claims Seasonal Adjustment Off Track – Click to enlarge
Initial Unemployment Claims Percentage of Total Employed – Click to enlarge
Initial Unemployment Claims Long View – Click to enlarge
The Labor Department, using the usual statistical hocus pocus, applied a seasonal adjustment factor of 1.03. Over the prior 10 years the factor for the comparable week has ranged from about 1.09 to about 1.02. This week’s adjustment was 1.027 (see chart addendum at bottom of page).
Initial Unemployment Claims Seasonal Adjustment Factors – Click to enlarge