EmailThe initial claims level increased from an upwardly revised 412,000 (from 408,000) for the week ending August 13 to 417,000 for the week ending August 20. This is the highest level of initial claims since the week ending July 2. The Briefing.com Consensus expected the initial claims level to fall to 400,000.
The Department of Labor announced that a labor dispute at Verizon Communications (VZ) accounted for at least 12,500 claims for the week ending August 13 and at least 8,500 claims for the week ending August 20. These claimants are a temporary outlier in the data and do not represent the overall trend in the labor sector.
Excluding the one-time increase from the Verizon workers, the initial claims level remained below the upper bound (410,000) of our "Recovery Zone" for the fifth consecutive week. At this level, we expect payroll gains to exceed the 100,000 necessary to maintain a stable unemployment rate.
The continuing claims level declined from 3.721 million for the week ending August 6 to 3.641 million for the week ending August 13. That is the lowest continuing claims level since the week ending Aug. 20, 2008. The consensus expected the continuing claims level to fall to 3.700 million.
