USD — Unemployment Claims

Unemployment Claims reports the number of new claims filed for unemployment insurance benefits in the United States. The market headline normally refers to the advance, seasonally adjusted initial claims figure published each week by the U.S. Department of Labor. An initial claim is filed by an unemployed person after separation from an employer to request a determination of basic eligibility. The statistic counts claims filed; it is not the unemployment rate and not the total number of unemployed people.

Initial claims are one of the fastest available signals of labour-market conditions because they are released weekly. A sustained increase can indicate that layoffs are becoming more common, while persistently low claims usually suggest employers are retaining workers. Continuing claims, reported separately, cover continued weeks claimed by people who previously filed an initial claim and can provide information about how quickly displaced workers find new jobs.

Compare Actual with Forecast and Previous, but also check revisions and the four-week moving average. Weekly data can be noisy around holidays, severe weather, school schedules, industrial shutdowns and changes in state processing. Eligibility rules and the share of unemployed people covered by unemployment insurance also mean claims do not measure the entire labour market.

A lower-than-expected initial claims reading is generally interpreted as stronger for employment and may support the USD or Treasury yields if it raises expectations for growth or tighter Federal Reserve policy. A higher reading may have the opposite effect. The response is not automatic: the trend, continuing claims, payroll growth, inflation and what markets had already priced all matter more than a single weekly observation.

Official source: U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims.