The Department of Labor reported this morning that the number of new UI claims dropped slightly on a seasonally adjusted basis to 631,000 – a decrease of 12,000 new UI claims. The 4-week moving average dipped only very slightly by 3,500 new claims, suggesting that the economy has not really picked up any significant steam.
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On a seasonally unadjusted basis, the number of new job ads posted has been stable or declining — there is no reason to expect that the number of new UI claims will shrink considerably in the next few weeks. While there were 58,000 more new job ads the week ending April 25 and another 31,000 additional new job ads the week ending May 2, there has been a drop of 9,300 and 3,500 new job ads in the past two weeks. The number of new ads placed on the three major national job boards fell by 5,300 ads last week, after three weeks of consecutive gains.
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