Non-Seasonally Adjusted Initial Jobless Claims UP 169,085 to 582,007

The U.S. Market is once again set to celebrate the seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims figure of 421,000 as it represents a seasonally adjusted reduction of 17,000 from the prior week. For the arithmetic challenged (like the fine folks at the Department of Laughter Labor), 161,007 American's actually filing for unemployment benefits were once again seasonally adjusted out of the headline number.

Not likely CNBC will delve too deeply into the non-seasonally adjusted figure as it is simply ugly. The stock market remains in a state of denial simply seasonally adjusting out 161,000 people does not make the country a better place.

Department of Laughter Labor Report

In the week ending Dec. 4, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 421,000, a decrease of 17,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 438,000. The 4-week moving average was 427,500, a decrease of 4,000 from the previous week's revised average of 431,500.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.2 percent for the week ending Nov. 27, a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate of 3.4 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Nov. 27 was 4,086,000, a decrease of 191,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 4,277,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,226,000, a decrease of 64,250 from the preceding week's revised average of 4,290,250.

Non-seasonally adjusted (a..k.a. Real World)

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 582,007 in the week ending Dec. 4, an increase of 169,085 from the previous week. There were 665,685 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.3 percent during the week ending Nov. 27, an increase of 0.4 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,188,560, an increase of 522,787 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 4.1 percent and the volume was 5,400,752.

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending Nov. 13 was 8,297,938. Complete report