Click to enlarge.
Click to enlarge.
Lucky #13 and the danger is still here? Go figure.
Those inspired by today's lower initial claims data point may wish to consider the following chart.
Click to enlarge.
That's 62 straight weeks of revisions to the upside. A betting man might therefore add 3,000 onto today's initial claims estimate. Some conspiracy minded individuals might claim that this is a presidential election year tactic, but that would not explain most of 2009, most of 2010, and most of 2011.
What would be the point of lowering it by 3,000 only to revise it upwards a week later? It's not like main street gets up early every Thursday morning glued to CNBC to see what initial claims did. They are much too busy watching Jim Cramer's Mad Money in the evenings, lol. Sigh.
Here's my non-sinister theory for what it is worth. The DOL's automated system can't estimate structural changes in our economy much better than PhDs sitting in ivory towers can.
Just opinions of course!
See Also:
Initial Claims Danger v.12
Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Initial Claims
DOL: Initial Claims
I hope someone finds the last chart useful. I had to manually sift through 3 1/2 years of weekly initial claims reports to generate it.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't help myself. I wanted to know what the hell were in those bags.
oops, last chart out to 1985:
ReplyDeletehttp://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=ahd
oops2, PAYEMS is monthly data and claims is weekly, so the twain never does meet:
ReplyDeletehttp://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=ahj
Troy,
ReplyDeleteThis is the "Good Times" index I guess, net hires less new claims. Doesn't get over zero all that often.
I'm not sure where you are going with this. Net hires already has initial claims built into it (sort of).
Net Hires = Hires - Fired (Or Quit)
If we then subtract initial claims we are basically saying...
Hires - Fired (Or Quit) - Fired (Or Quit)
It doesn't really surprise me that it doesn't get over zero all that often. It's heavily weighted towards the firing (or quitting) part.
The revisions are a NAKED SHORT ON THE CURRENCY! You can't escape the math. We're DOOMED!
ReplyDeletemab,
ReplyDeleteDamn that math! It's like Candy Store vs. Candy Mountain!