UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS - SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA
The previous week's level was revised down by 31,000 from 202,000 to 171,000. The 4-week moving average was 170,000, a decrease of 8,000 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised down by 30,500 from 208,500 to 178,000. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.1 percent for the week ending March 26, unchanged from the previous week's revised rate. The previous week's rate was revised up by 0.2 from 0.9 to 1.1 percent. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending March 26 was 1,523,000, an increase of 17,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up 199,000 from 1,307,000 to 1,506,000. The 4-week moving average was 1,541,250, a decrease of 35,250 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 187,500 from 1,389,000 to 1,576,500.
Note:
Beginning with the Unemployment Insurance (UI) Weekly Claims News Release issued Thursday, April 7, 2022, the methodology used to seasonally adjust the national initial claims and continued claims reflects a change in the estimation of the models.
Seasonal adjustment factors can be either multiplicative or additive. A multiplicative seasonal effect is assumed to be proportional to the level of the series. A sudden large increase in the level of the series will be accompanied by a proportionally large seasonal effect. In contrast, an additive seasonal effect is assumed to be unaffected by the level of the series. In times of relative economic stability, the multiplicative option is generally preferred over the additive option. However, in the presence of a large level shift in a time series, multiplicative seasonal adjustment factors can result in systematic over- or under-adjustment of the series; in such cases, additive seasonal adjustment factors are preferred since they tend to track seasonal fluctuations more accurately in the series and have smaller revisions.
Prior to the pandemic, the unemployment insurance claims series used multiplicative models to seasonally adjust the claims. Starting in March 2020, Bureau of Labor Statistics staff, who provide the seasonal adjustment factors, specified these series as additive. Now that most of the large effects of the pandemic on the UI series have lessened, the seasonal adjustment models are once again specified as multiplicative models. Statistical tests show that the UI series should, in normal times, be estimated multiplicatively.
While the pandemic period remains within the five-year revision period, the UI series will use a hybrid adjustment approach. For the most volatile economic periods of the pandemic, the series will continue to be additively adjusted for the revised series. Before and after these periods, the series will be adjusted multiplicatively. For consistency, all seasonal factors on our website are now shown as multiplicative where any additive factors were converted to implicit multiplicative factors. Note that in recent weeks, beyond the most volatile period of the series, any changes from additive to multiplicative can result in one-time larger revisions to the seasonally adjusted estimates than usual.
For further questions on the seasonal adjustment methodology, please see the official release page for the UI claims seasonal adjustment factors or contact BLS directly through the Local Area Unemployment Statistics web contact form.
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Source: DOL
Click here for a full list of week-by-week 2021 Initial Unemployment Claims
