In the week ending June 6, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 601,000, a decrease of 24,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 625,000. The 4-week moving average was 621,750, a decrease of 10,500 from the previous week's revised average of 632,250.
The above chart indicates several important points. First, the 4-week moving average topped out in roughly mid-April and has been declining since. That's 6 weeks of a decline --- not enough to say with certainty the trend is clear but enough to say there is a strong possibility the trend has changed. Second, note the total number has been fluctuating between 600,000 and 660,000 or so since late February.
Combine that chart with this one:
And you see the possibility of further declines is more likely than not. This is good because unemployment claims are the front-end of the labor market; claims must drop before we can see improvement in the longer term measures of unemployment.
In addition,
The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for May, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $340.0 billion, an increase of 0.5 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month, but 9.6 percent (±0.7%) below May 2008. Total sales for the March through May 2009 period were down 9.7 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The March to April 2009 percent change was revised from -0.4 percent (±0.5%)* to -0.2 percent (±0.2%)*.
The above chart divides the last 9 months into two categories.
1.) The end of last year when sales crashed and burned.
2.) The last 5 months when the month over month change fluctuated more around 0% change -- an improvement.
Also note that retail sales increased .5% without car sales.
Bottom line -- this is good news.
