Weekly unemployment claims down 21,000

So skittish is the economy these days with ups and downs in the stock market and mercurial reports in other sectors such as housing and manufacturing that any one piece of good news may be seized upon with fervor.

Thursday's good news was that the volatile national figure for initial unemployment claims for the week ended Oct. 23 was 434,000, down 21,000 from a week earlier.

Separate state reports lag a week behind, but the news was good locally as well, with declines in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware for the week ended Oct. 16.

So should we be excited? With a 9.6 percent national unemployment rate, should we expect a big change when the U.S. Labor Department releases its monthly report next Friday?

Not really, said Eileen Appelbaum, a Philadelphia labor economist who works at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

"The fact that it is going down is better than it going up," she said. "But any number over 400,000 is bad news."

Mark Price, a labor economist at Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, cautioned that the initial-claims numbers are volatile.

"You have to see a sustained pattern over a long period of time," he said. "Things are better; they just aren't back to normal yet."

Statistics aside, what matters is the local job situation.

This week, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA said it would add 200 jobs at a distribution facility in Northeast Philadelphia. Also, Express Scripts Inc. told the state it would lay off at least 400 workers at its distribution facility in Bensalem.

Economists prefer to track the four-week moving average of initial claims, because it smooths out vagaries in the labor market. The moving average declined by 5,500 nationally. Over the year, there has been greater progress, with initial claims dropping from 528,000, the number filed the same week a year ago.

Whatever the movement, Pennsylvania often shows up in any list of top five states simply because it is populous.

This week, Pennsylvania was among the top five in decreases of initial claims with a drop of 5,248 to 22,898 initial claims filed. But by percentage, the change was not as dramatic - an 18.7 percent decline.

New Jersey's initial claims dropped 32.2 percent, down 3,108 claims to 9,655. Delaware's initial claims declined 25.9 percent, down 392 claims to 1,123.