Claims for Unemployment Insurance Improve as January Ends

First time claims for unemployment insurance fell 12,000 for the week ended January 28 to 367,000, reversing half of the increase of the previous week, the ""Department of Labor"":http://www.dol.gov/ reported Thursday.

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Continuing claims for unemployment insurance fell 130,000 to 3,437,000 for the week ended January 21, the lowest level since August 2008.

The total number of individuals receiving benefits â€" including emergency and extended programs â€" was essentially unchanged at 7,670,452. This compares, though, with nearly 13.1 million people classified as unemployed by the ""Bureau of Labor Statistics in December"":http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm. The BLS January employment situation report will be released Friday.

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The unemployment claims data continue to be affected by holiday-shortened weeks in January, specifically January 16 holiday in observance of Martin Luther King's birthday. Though many states allow for filing of claims online and by telephone even when offices are closed, state unemployment personnel still have to process the claims.

The four week moving average of new claims â€" smoothing volatility in the weekly numbers fell by 2,000 to 375,750 and the average for continuing claims dropped 43,000 to 3,527,500.

Much of the recent volatility in the claims data is due to seasonal adjustment issues rather than underlying changes in the labor market, but the trend in layoffs has clearly slowed. The data on continuing claims are not as clear â€" the decline could be due to more people finding jobs although some people are exhausting benefits.

Claims data for the week used for the January employment situation report appeared better than data for the same week leading up to the December report suggesting another solid gain in the payroll report though the injection of seasonal help a month ago included workers who may not have worked long enough to qualify for unemployment insurance once their jobs ended. Of the 200,000 jobs added, according to the report for December, about 42,000 were ""courier"" jobs.