The number of people unemployed less than 5 weeks is still decreasing.
The number of people unemployed for 5-14 weeks decreased a bit but is still high. My guess here is that we'll see this number in the above range as people who are unemployed for less than 5 weeks don't find work.
The number unemployed 15 weeks and longer edged up.
The median weeks on unemployment increased but is still below the high of the cycle.
What I find interesting is the short end of the unemployment cycle -- people unemployed for less than 5 weeks -- continues to drop and has been dropping since the beginning of the year.
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My guess is that the bulk of the firing was done earlier in the year, but that no one has any motivation or need to hire right now. This would mean a slowing in the establishment survey job loss numbers (which we have seen) and a reduction in initial claims (also seen), but that some of this improvement is because the losses were all taken up front in huge hit instead of spread more evenly across multiple months due to the initial fear stage of this unusual recession. It is also why I question whether some of the improvement we have seen is real improvement or just a result of a front loaded firing cycle.
This is entirely consistent with a slowing in the rate of layoffs without a substantial increase in the rate of new hires ... short term unemployment drops as those remaining unemployed slide into the longer term category while there are fewer newly unemployed, same in the middle as the big bulge in layoffs slides across the "14 weeks ago" boundary.
Its one cohort unemployed between 14 and 18 weeks ago passing from the middle category to the long term category while another, smaller, cohort unemployed between 5 and 9 weeks ago partially replaces them without being replaced by the same number of newly unemployed.
So long term goes up, medium term goes down, short term goes down.
My guess is that the economy, growing since June, began to contract again in September. The rebound we saw in the summer was probably due to an inventory rebound and government programs such as the government for clunkers program. Government jobs fell because state and local governments laid lots of workers off due to budget shortfalls. The economy will remain weak until the banks start lending again, which might not happen until something is done about the toxic assets.
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