The Associated Press and just about everyone else is making a big deal out of the fact that new applications for unemployment benefits were down by 52,000 last week over the week before. The AP reads, ?565,000 New Jobless Claims: Lowest Level Since January;? The Wall St. Journal’s headline reads ?Jobless Claims Drop in Last Week;? and Fox News proclaims ?New Unemployment Claims Drop to 565,000.? But what seems to be going unnoticed in all these stories is that last week included the 4th of July holiday, observed on Friday the 3rd of July by government offices including unemployment offices. In other words unemployment claims could only be filed on 4 days last week rather than the typical 5 days.

When the numbers are broken down and viewed on a per day basis they look quite different. During the week of June 27th there were 614,000 applications for unemployment benefits filed. Divided by 5 days gives us an average of 122,800 applications filed per day. Last week, when the total fell to 565,000 the daily average rose to 141,250. This means that for the days that the unemployment offices around the country were actually open, the average number of new filers went up by an average of over 18,000.

Now clearly it could be argued that people who would have filed on Friday simply did so earlier in the week. On the other hand, it could also be argued that many of those who wanted to file couldn?t make it in during those four days and put it off till the following week. We will have to wait till numbers for next week are in to gain a handle on this question. But the point is that to make a big deal out the fall in weekly jobless claims for last week, as the media seems to be doing, is misleading and may actually be an apples and oranges comparison.