The 4-week moving average of raw first time claims for unemployment is 339,000. Today's initial claims report is here, showing the contrasting seasonally adjusted figure at 358,000, about 6% higher than the raw numbers indicate is the situation over the last month.
The lower raw figure yields an annualized rate of 17.6 million in the last month, the higher seasonally adjusted figure an annualized rate of 18.6 million. Up until today the raw annualized rate for all of 2013 has been running at 19.5 million, so the trend is definitely lower, almost 10% lower, in the last four weeks and is positive for job gains.
