A “Now Hiring” sign is displayed on a storefront on October 21, 2022 in New York City.
Leonardo Munoz | View Press | Corbis News | Getty Images
Calling the state of the US jobs market these days stable seems like an understatement given the latest data released by the Department of Labor.
That's because most of the past few weeks have shown that first-time claims for unemployment benefits haven't fluctuated at all — as in zero.
During five of the past six weeks, the total level of initial unemployment claims has been exactly 212,000. Given a workforce of 168 million people, such a slump would seem at least unusual, if not outlandish, but that is what the figures released every Thursday morning since mid-March have shown.
The consistency raised some eyebrows on Wall Street. The only week that changed was March 30, with 222,000.
“How is this statistically possible? Five of the last six weeks, exactly the same number,” market veteran Jim Bianco, head of Bianco Research, posted Thursday on X.
“Initial claims for unemployment insurance are government programs, with 50 government bases, hundreds of offices, and 50 websites to file them. Weather, seasonality, holidays, and economic shocks increase the number of people filing claims from week to week,” he added. “However, this metric is so stable that it does not change even by 1,000 orders per week.”
Others chimed in, too.
“The numbers are made up,” said one thread, while another said: “Someone is cooking the books.”
However, others offered more analytical insights, attributing the uniformity of the data to seasonal adjustments. “You can look at every Jim state. These vary wildly,” suggested Tracy Renick, strategist at Zacks Investment Research.
In fact, a Labor Department spokesperson noted that although the 212,000 series printed on unemployment claims data is “uncommon,” it would not be considered anomalous.
The official said this line “can be reasonably interpreted as an indication that there was very little fluctuation in initial claims during this period compared to historical patterns, and that seasonal adjustment factors effectively remove seasonality from the overall numbers reported by states.” .
Furthermore, non-seasonally adjusted claims showed significant fluctuations over the five-week period, recording readings of 202,722; 191,772; 193,921; 197,349; 215,265 and 208,509.
Federal Reserve officials are monitoring the weekly claims numbers as part of their broader assessment of the labor market, which has shown surprising resilience as the central bank tightens monetary policy.
The Labor Department official also noted that new seasonality factors for claims data were announced a month ago.
“Using the new seasonal adjustment factors, initial claims have been at a fairly constant level since approximately mid-September 2023 and more so since the beginning of February 2024,” the spokesperson said.
