Cici's Teaching Notes📒 Important U.S. Economic Data - Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims

UI Claims (Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims) is the main indicator released by the U.S. Department of Labor in 1967 to predict the labor market situation in the U.S. Unemployment claims are effective and frequent compared to the non-farm payrolls data at the beginning of each month. As a result, it has become a closely watched employment indicator by policy makers, analysts and the media.

UI Claims reflect the number of people who filed for unemployment claims for the first time in the previous week

- Release Time: Every Thursday before the market at 8:30 EST (daylight saving time)

- What's the impact: Can be used to predict the unemployment rate and non-farm payrolls, and is a leading indicator of the strength of the labor market.

- How to judge: YoY, expected values (can be found on major financial websites)

- Related data: UI Continued Claims, Non-farm payrolls.

Further Understanding of UI Claims

First, the data does not reflect the net number of unemployed. Instead, UI claims only count the newly unemployed who lost their jobs last week, and do not take into account those who have found new jobs that week. So there could be a time when jobless claims are very high, but employment achieves net growth.

In addition, the data is not seasonally adjusted and is susceptible to short-term time fluctuations, such as natural disasters like hurricanes. So we can look at the 4-week average trend in parallel when watching.

UI Continued Claims (Unemployment Insurance Continued Claims), is the number of people who have received unemployment claims, but have not yet found work and have continued to apply for claims with the previous week. In principle, U.S. workers can apply for 26 consecutive weeks, although the situation varies from state to state.

UI Claims is more forward-looking than UI Continued Claims, and therefore more popular with the market. However, the uncertainty factor is also higher, while the number of continued claims is more reflective of the real situation affecting the job market.

When the two fall in tandem, it means that the job market is improving and there are signs of a rebound in the economy, while when the two rise and fall in tandem, it means that the job market outlook is not yet clear and should be kept in mind.

The above is the sharing of non-farm data, do you know more about it? Welcome to share in the comment section.🤗 🥰