Tag Archives: Bureau of Labor Statistics

First-time claims for unemployment insurance fell 22,000 to 344,000 for the week ended February 23, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists expected 360,000 initial unemployment claims. The drop in filings--the third in the last four weeks--resumed a downward trend in layoffs.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a nationwide outplacement firm, is predicting a relocation surge in 2013 from job-seeking homeowners who are finally able to list their properties. As home prices improve, more homeowners have been lifted out of negative equity, and thus more free to sell their properties and relocate. ""One factor that has kept unemployment rates high has been the inability of underwater homeowners to relocate for employment opportunities. With home prices bouncing back, even those who may now simply break even on a home sale might consider moving to a region where jobs are more plentiful,"" said John A. Challenger, the firm's CEO.

First-time claims for unemployment insurance jumped 20,000 to 362,000 for the week ending February 16, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists expected 359,000 initial unemployment claims.

Bolstered by favorable seasonal adjustment factors, first-time claims for unemployment insurance dropped 27,000 to 341,000 for the week ending February 9, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists expected a much smaller decline to 360,000. Initial claims were under 350,000--a dividing line between a strong and weak labor market--for the third time in the last five weeks, hinting layoff activity has returned to normal.

First time claims for unemployment insurance continued to move sideways, dropping 5,000 to 366,000 for the week ended February 2, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists expected a larger decline to 360,000 from the prior week’s 330,000 initial claims.

If businesses had any reluctance to hire in December because of fiscal cliff concerns, they didn't make up for it in January: Payrolls expanded by 157,000, down from December, but the unemployment rate moved to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent a month earlier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday. Job growth for December, originally reported at 155,000, was revised upward to 196,000. November's growth was revised to 247,000 from 161,000.

First-time claims for unemployment insurance jumped 38,000 to 368,000 for the week ending January 26, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists expected a smaller increase to 350,000 from the prior week's 330,000 initial claims. The weekly jump in initial claims was the first in three weeks. It reflected, in part, a drop in the seasonal adjustment factor the Labor Department applies to the raw data, which includes holiday workers whose jobs were eliminated. For the third straight week, the originally reported claims figure was unrevised.

Lincoln, Nebraska recorded a best-in-the-nation 3.4 percent unemployment rate in December as unemployment rates dropped in 290 of the 372 metropolitan areas in the county, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Wednesday. Three other metro areas reported unemployment rates of 4.0 percent or below: Lafayette and Lake Charles, Louisiana, at 3.7 percent each, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, at 4.0 percent. The highest unemployment rates in the country, according to the BLS report, were in Yuma, Arizona, and El Centro, California, at 27.3 percent and 25.5 percent, respectively.

Despite seeing a month-over-month drop, the 10- and 20-city Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes registered their strongest year-over-year improvement in two and a half years on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, Standard & Poor's, which publishes the indexes, reported Tuesday. The 10-city index fell 0.2 percent, and the 20-city index dropped 0.1 percent from October to November. On an annual basis, however, the 10-city index was up 4.5 percent, and the 20-city index rose 5.5 percent.

Two housing reports in the week just demonstrated, yet again, economists are not infallible. On Tuesday, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported existing home sales for December: 4.94 million against a consensus forecast of 5.1 million. Then on Friday, the Census Bureau and HUD reported jointly 369,000 new homes were sold in December compared with a consensus forecast of 388,000. There are several important housing related reports due out next week, but they will take a backseat to the report on fourth quarter GDP and Friday's report on the employment situation.