Not-seasonally-adjusted first time claims for unemployment now average another new all-time low in the last four weeks under Obama, also marking the eighth week in a row below 300,000.
Over the last four weeks, jobless claims have averaged just 262,000 weekly, handily beating last week's old record 4-week average low of 273,000.
Over the last eight weeks, jobless claims have now averaged an astonishing 273,000 weekly.
Annualized these average levels would fall into the range of 13.6 million to 14.2 million per year. The best actual performance under Bush was 16.2 million per year, also not-seasonally-adjusted. So these are excellent numbers indeed, if they can keep them up. The difference, however, is that under Bush the low levels of claims occurred simultaneously with high levels of employment.
By the way, the advance estimate of 228,399 in last week's report for September 7th merely bumps up this week to a revised 229,485. Supposedly reporting problems were blamed for the low level. It appears any missing numbers from last week appear in this week's advance estimate, which is up +42,262 week over week, which means this week's advance estimate is significantly higher than it really is.
Read this week's report here.
