US Initial Jobless Claims Edge Up Amid Federal Shutdown

According to an analysis by foreign media of unadjusted state-released filings during the federal government shutdown, US initial jobless claims edged up last week. Initial claims for unemployment benefits rose to approximately 228,000 in the week ending November 1, up from a revised 219,000 the previous week.

The Labor Department hasn't issued weekly reports since September 25 due to the government shutdown, but it did provide downloadable data for most states. The foreign media adjusted this raw data using pre-published weekly seasonal factors from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While this calculation method closely aligns with the official seasonally adjusted data when including data from all states, the latest weekly report lacks data from New Mexico and the Virgin Islands. As such, the foreign media used the average of the previous four weeks for these areas as a substitute.

Continued claims for unemployment benefits, a measure of the total number of people receiving benefits, edged up slightly from 1.95 million to 1.96 million in the week ending October 25, according to calculations.

Unemployment claims from federal employees fell for the second consecutive week, but remain elevated. According to data published on the Labor Department website, the 'Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees' program received a total of 7,445 initial claims in the week ending November 1. This data also lacks information from the aforementioned two regions.

In the week ending October 25, continued claims from federal employees climbed to 30,145, the highest level since January 2019 (i.e., during the previous government shutdown).

Earlier, according to reemployment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., US companies announced the most job cuts in October for the same period in more than two decades. Employers announced a surge in layoffs in October, and year-to-date layoffs have surpassed 1 million, numbers that appear to sound a fresh alarm bell on the state of the labor market.

David Tinsley, senior economist at the Bank of America Institute, said of the labor market: "It's cooling, but it's not collapsing."

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