The Trend Is Not Your Friend -- Weekly Jobs Report

Boiler plate: US jobless claims ________________ this past week holding ___________ this year’s average and signaling sustained progress in the labor market.

For the past two years that has been the opening line, or a variation thereof, of every weekly jobs report, no matter how bad. Today, I cannot make this up, the lead paragraph in Bloomberg:

Applications for unemployment benefits in the U.S. rose to 317,000 last week, holding below this year’s average and signaling sustained progress in the labor market.

Applications for unemployment benefits rose -- during the summer in perfectly good weather when road construction is at its highest -- and Bloomberg says that signals sustained progress in the labor market. Really?

The boiler plate is interesting but what I enjoy most is the spin. The increase wasn't all that much; in fact it's a non-story.

Except.

The big story what not mentioned. It wasn't the "number" that was important, it was the direction of the move that analysts predicted (or had hoped), and Bloomberg cleverly tried to hide that.

If the new number is 317, 000, a jump of 4,000, means that the previous number (revised, of course) was 313,000. Now the next line in the Bloomberg story:

The median forecast of 52 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 310,000.

Claims have averaged around 324,000 so far in 2014. 

Analysts expected a decrease in the overall number from 313,000 to 310,000. In fact, the number did not decrease; it went up (as "increase").

The most important figure by Bloomberg's own admission is the four-week average. If it's a good number it is at the top of the story. If it's a bad number, it's buried. (The order is reversed under a Republican administration.) So at the very bottom of this report that signals the American job market is only getting stronger, we have this, and again, I cannot make this up:

The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, climbed to 315,250 from 310,500 in the prior week. 

That's a pretty healthy climb when this week's report was a measly increase of 4,000. That tells me the trend is not your friend.

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In anticipation of the president's "not-open-to-the-public-photo-op-trip" to one of the most remote Indian reservations in America:

Cherokee Nation, Paul Revere and the Raiders

Half Breed, Cher