Economics
U.S. Jobless-Claims Data Become Trickier as Economic Gauge
- Massachusetts joins Connecticut in confirming data-entry error
- Interpreting weekly claims conflated by state filing cycles
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For decades, the U.S. jobless-claims report has provided a straightforward, routine read on the labor market every Thursday. Now it carries a variety of asterisks.
Two sizable reporting errors in as many weeks have inflated the U.S. Labor Department’s nationwide jobless-claims count and the number of applicants under a federal emergency program. On top of that, the report has been beset by data quirks stemming from filing schedules that vary from state to state, as well as seasonal adjustments that have been rendered less useful because of the explosion in layoffs during the coronavirus pandemic.