U.S. initial jobless claims end March on upbeat tone, industrial sector still remains soggy

In the week ending April 1, the United States initial claims for unemployment insurance decreased by 25k, to 234k. This week’s reading was well below consensus expectations of 250k. However, continuing claims fell modestly 24k to 2.028 million in the week ending March 25. The seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate remained at 1.5 percent.

This week’s improvement was driven by a sharp decrease in claims in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York, three states where weather may have been a factor recently.

"We see some signs of improvement in this week’s numbers, with a decline in Michigan and Georgia but Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio still experienced increases in claims," Barclays Research commented in its recent publication.

Although it is far too early to draw firm conclusions from ever-volatile weekly claims data, the pattern of claims across states in this week’s data is consistent with some softening in manufacturing in March.

To be sure, this signal continues to point in the opposite direction of the recent signals from survey data and from the view that manufacturing output is likely to rise gradually this year.