Initial weekly unemployment claims increased to 429,000, a 25,000 increase in a week. Last week was revised up to 404,000. The 4 week moving average increased to 408,500. We're going backward, the wrong direction for job growth.

The magic number to show job creation is at minimum, below 400,000 initial unemployment claims per week and most Economists will quote 375,000.

Below is the mathematical log of initial weekly unemployment claims, so one can get a better sense of the rise and fall of the numbers. A log helps remove some statistical noise, it's kind of an averaging. As we can see we have a step rise during the height of the recession, but then a leveling, not a similar decline....for a long period. Instead, we have this yo-yo bobblehead, hovering too near 400,000 every week on initial claims, never ending labor malaise for most of the time after the recession ended in July 2009. Now, notice the tail or the right of the graph, it appears a downward slope, a decline in initial claims, which started to emerge in February, is now moving upward and is an established pattern. This week implies yet another bouncing workers ball uptick.

Below is the 4 week moving average, set to a logarithmic scale to remove even more statistical noise, for the last year. Again, we need the 4 week moving average to stay below 400,000 and keep dropping. Numerous economists say the number is 375,000 to show any job growth. We need this number to keep dropping, steadily and instead, it's going in the wrong direction.

Below is the 4 week moving average, set to a log scale, from April 1st, 2007. We are nowhere near pre-recession initial weekly unemployment claims levels.

Continuing unemployment claims dropped but bear in mind people can plain being running out of benefits.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 16 was 3,641,000, a decrease of 68,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,709,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,697,750, a decrease of 22,750 from the preceding week's revised average of 3,720,500.

In the week ending April 9th, not seasonally adjusted, the raw number was 8,187,232 official people obtaining some sort of unemployment insurance benefit.