Estimates show U.S. initial jobless claims fell to about 215,000 last week

Initial jobless claims fell in the US last week, according to data analytics on unseasonally adjusted state claims released during the shutdown. Initial claims for the week ending October 11 were about 215,000, down from an estimate of 234,000 the week before, according to a Bloomberg analysis of the data. Because of the shutdown, the Labor Department has not released weekly unemployment reports since September 25, but downloadable data are available for most states. The estimates are revised from the original data source using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' pre-published weekly seasonal adjustment factor. When data are available for all states, this method is highly consistent with official quarterly data. However, the latest weekly data for Arizona, Massachusetts, Nevada and Tennessee was missing and replaced with an average of the previous four weeks. Calculations showed that the number of renewals rose slightly to 1.93 million for the week ending October 4, up from the previous week's estimate of 1.92 million. (Jin Ten)