§Forecast for DOL seasonally adjusted continued claims, week ending August 1, 2026
Framing and exact resolver: this targets the DOL ETA Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims first print for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment, also called continued claims, for the week ending August 1, 2026. The DOL release table labels this variant as Insured Unemployment (SA), so all anchors below use that same seasonally adjusted variant.
Ledger resolver note: the official statistical source is DOL ETA, but the canonical ledger sourceBinding for resolution is the ALFRED CCSA advance-vintage CSV at alfred.stlouisfed.org with a 1e-06 transform to millions. I keep the forecast tied to that ledger target and use DOL only to verify the first-print release date and source series substance.
Opened the current DOL UI Weekly Claims PDF at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf and read the headline seasonally adjusted insured unemployment section.↳ The July 23, 2026 release reported SA insured unemployment for week ending July 11 at 1,796,000, down 2,000 from the previous week's revised 1,798,000; the four-week moving average was 1,805,250, down 4,000.Read the DOL release table 'Unemployment Insurance Data for Regular State Programs' and the one-year history table in the same PDF.↳ The table shows Insured Unemployment (SA) of 1,796,000 for July 11, 1,798,000 for July 4, 1,821,000 for June 27, and a prior-year comparable value of 1,941,000.Read the DOL seasonally adjusted weekly claims history table for 2026 levels and changes.↳ Recent SA insured unemployment values were 1,786,000 on May 30, 1,800,000 on June 6, 1,812,000 on June 13, 1,806,000 on June 20, 1,821,000 on June 27, 1,798,000 on July 4, and 1,796,000 on July 11.Checked the DOL ETA Office of Unemployment Insurance weekly claims publication schedule at https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/claims.asp.↳ The official schedule says the UI Weekly Claims News Release is published each week on Thursday at 8:30 AM EST, with the listed 2026 non-Thursday exception being Wednesday, November 25, 2026 at 8:30 AM EST; August 13, 2026 is the Thursday release covering the August 1 insured-unemployment week and falls inside the ledger expected window of August 11 through August 15, 2026.Checked BLS current seasonal factors for continued claims around the target week.↳ The BLS factors list continued-claims seasonal factors of 1.037 for July 18, 2026, 1.020 for July 25, 2026, 1.019 for August 1, 2026, and 0.999 for August 8, 2026.Base rate/reference class: the outside-view prior is persistence of the latest official SA insured-unemployment level, with uncertainty calibrated to 2026 weekly changes in the same DOL SA continued-claims series rather than to initial claims or unadjusted state totals.
Prior/update/interval: persistence prior = 1.796 million from the latest DOL first print; historical sample = 27 successive weekly SA insured-unemployment changes in 2026 from January 3 through July 11, giving sigma = 0.023 million. Update components: level is 0.009 million below the latest four-week average of 1.805 million, two-week momentum is -0.025 million from June 27 to July 11, and the July 18 initial-claims fall to 187,000 versus 209,000 in the same July 23 DOL release points to lower near-term inflows; combined adjustment = -0.016 million, so point = 1.796 - 0.016 = 1.780 million. One-week 80% half-width = 1.28*sigma = 1.28*0.023 = 0.029 million; because the target is three weekly steps after the latest continued-claims observation, scale by sqrt(3), giving half-width = 0.051 million and bounds 1.729 to 1.831 million.
Counter-considerations: upside risk is that very low initial claims reverse or benefit durations lengthen, which would land above the interval if continued claims rise by more than about 35,000 from 1.796 million to print above 1.831 million. Downside risk is that July seasonal adjustment and lower layoffs pull insured unemployment below 1.729 million; outside the interval would require a roughly 67,000 or larger decline from the latest level.
Review disposition: accepted the resolver critique by aligning resolutionSourceUrl and rule to the ledger-bound ALFRED CCSA advance-vintage source while explicitly noting DOL ETA as the official first-print source; accepted the release-window critique by tying the August 13 date to the ledger's 2026-08-11 through 2026-08-15 expected window; kept the prior/update/interval arithmetic unchanged.