Jobless claims

Initial claims should not be confused with the number of people who actually receive unemployment benefits. For one, initial claims don't include continued claims—individuals who claim benefits for additional weeks of unemployment beyond their initial claim. Additionally, not all claimants will actually receive unemployment benefits.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration publishes weekly unemployment-insurance claims data, which are used in current analysis of unemployment trends nationally and in each state.

Market impact

The weekly release of the report can be a market moving event. The employment situation is extremely important for a macroeconomic analysis, so the financial markets track employment indicators, although this is a low impact indicator compared with the monthly BLS's "Employment Report". This report tracks how many new people have filed for unemployment benefits in the previous week. It is a good gauge of the U.S. job market. For instance, when more people file for unemployment benefits, fewer people have jobs, and vice versa. Investors can use this report to gather pertinent information about the economy, but it's a very volatile data, so the four-week average of jobless claims is monitored.

Initial jobless claims measure emerging unemployment, and it is released after one week, but continued claims data measure the number of persons claiming unemployment benefits, and it is released one week later than the initial claims, that's the reason initial have a higher impact in the financial markets.