WASHINGTON — Initial claims for U.S. state unemployment benefits fell by 2,000 to 238,000 in the November 25 holiday week, only slightly below the 240,000 level expected, data released by the Labor Department Thursday showed.
The four-week moving average for initial claims, a better measure of the underlying trend of the data, rose by 2,250 to 242,250 in the November 25 week as the 229,000 level in the October 28 week rolled out of the equation.
If the number of headline claims does not change next week and there are no revisions to data from the past four weeks, the four-week average will fall by 250 as the 239,000 level in the November 4 week rolls out of the calculation.
The Labor Department reported that backlogged claims filings in Puerto Rico continued to be processed, while claims in the Virgin Islands "continue to be disrupted." Unadjusted claims in Puerto Rico totaled 2,965 in the current week after 6,972 in the previous week, though the shorter workweek may have had some role in that decline.
Seasonal adjustment factors had expected a decrease of 17.7%, or 48,707, in unadjusted claims in the holiday-shortened week. Instead, unadjusted claim fell by 50,760 to 224,208, so the current week's level was well below the 249,774 level a year ago.
The level of continuing claims rose by 42,000 to 1.957 million in the November 18 employment survey week, up from 1.900 million in the October 14 employment survey week.
The data suggest some deterioration from the mid-October survey week, both for initial claims and continuing claims, a negative for payrolls.
Unadjusted continuing claims fell by 110,981 to 1.613 million in the week, keeping the level well below the 1.746 million level a year earlier. The four-week moving average for continuing claims rose by 18,250 to 1.911 million.
The seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate held steady at 1.4%, down from 1.5% in the same week a year earlier.
The unemployment rate among the insured labor force is well below that reported monthly by the Labor Department because claims are approved for the most part only for job losers, not the job leavers and labor force reentrants included in the monthly report.
