The jobless claims numbers are both better and worse than you may have read

The headlines this morning say that more people filed for unemployment benefits last week for the first time since March, according to the Labor Department. But the reported increase is merely a statistical mirage.

Properly viewed, job losses are essentially unchanged over the past several weeks at an extremely high level. About 10 times as many people are losing their jobs every week than did before the economy took that terrible blow in March.

In the real world, slightly fewer people lost their jobs last week than the week before. The widely anticipated re-weakening in the labor market in reaction to the surge in coronavirus infections isn’t yet showing up in the weekly claims data. A boost in new layoffs will probably show up soon enough.

The figures that were reported Thursday morning aren’t wrong, but they are misleading.