Initial claims for jobless benefits will decline slightly in tomorrow’s weekly update, based on The Capital Spectator’s average econometric forecast. New claims for the week through January 12 will dip to 369,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis vs. the previously reported 371,000. The projection is in line with consensus forecasts via surveys of economists.

Here’s a closer look at the numbers, followed by brief definitions of the methodologies behind The Capital Spectator’s projections:

ARIMA: An autoregressive integrated moving average model that analyzes the historical record of the data series in R via the “forecast” package.
ES: An exponential smoothing model that analyzes the historical record of the data in R via the “forecast” package.