The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued its weekly report on initial claims for unemployment insurance this morning. Nationwide, the number of seasonally adjusted claims was 881,000 last week. This is 130,000 less than the (upwardly revised) number of claims for the previous week, 1,011,000.

Beginning with this week’s numbers, DOL has shifted its seasonal adjustment methodology from a multiplicative one to an additive one. This change has not yet been applied to previous weeks’ unemployment numbers. For this reason, this week over week comparison is misleading. (See Calculated Risk’s discussion of the issue.)

Without seasonal adjustment, the number of initial claims was 833,352 last week. This is 7,591 more than the number of unadjusted claims last week.

The 4-week moving average of seasonally adjusted claims was 991,750, down from last week’s revised 1,069,250.

The state Employment Security Department will issue its report for Washington later this morning.