Initial & Continuing Jobless Claims Increased Last Week; Goldman Estimates

Goldman Sachs economics research group estimates that seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims increased to about 228k for the week ended November 1st by combining the Department of Labor (DOL)’s pre-released seasonal factors with this afternoon’s release of state-level claims.

While the DOL is not producing any official data releases during the government shutdown, some employees involved with the administration of unemployment insurance are excepted from the shutdown and publish the state-level data as a part of their regular duties.

Estimates for New Mexico did not appear in today’s DOL data, and we assume that initial claims there were in line with last week’s levels.

At the state level, we estimate that initial claims rose by 5k each in Missouri and Kentucky but declined by 3k each in Texas and California (all state-level data seasonally adjusted by GS).

Using the same set of assumptions, we estimate that continuing claims increased to 1,954k for the week ended October 25th.

These estimates are based on preliminary data and may change when DOL officially releases jobless claims after the government shutdown.

Notably, homebase reports that the Entertainment industry is seeing the biggest layoffs…

Finally, while the official data remains unknown due to the shutdown, Bloomberg has summarized the private and alternative data…

…most of which suggests a softening labor market.