Estimates show that the number of initial jobless claims in the United States fell to about 215,000 last week

ChainCatcher message, based on the unadjusted state-level claims data released during the U.S. government shutdown, shows that the number of initial unemployment claims in the U.S. decreased last week. According to Bloomberg's analysis of the data, for the week ending October 11, the number of initial claims was approximately 215,000, down from the previous week's estimate of 234,000. Due to the government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Labor has not released its weekly unemployment report since September 25, but it still provides downloadable data for most states. This estimate adjusted the raw data using the seasonally adjusted factors previously published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

When data from all states is complete, this method is highly consistent with the official seasonally adjusted data. However, the latest weekly data from Arizona, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Tennessee is missing and has been replaced with the average of the previous four weeks. The calculations show that for the week ending October 4, the number of continuing claims slightly increased to 1.93 million, up from the previous week's estimate of 1.92 million.