- by New Deal democrat
Because tomorrow is the Federal Juneteenth Holiday, initial and continuing claims were released today. They continue to show a slowly weakening, but not (yet) recessionary, economy.
Initial claims declined -5,000 to 245,000 for the week, while the four week moving average rose another 4,750 to 245,500. This four week average is the highest since August of 2023. Meanwhile, with the usual one week lag, continuing claims declined -6,000 to 1.945 million, after last week the highest since November 2021 (not shown):
While this continues the weakening trend we have seen for the past few weeks, on the YoY% basis more useful for recession forecasting, it was “more of the same.” Initial claims were up 3.4%, the four week average up 5.8%, and continuing claims up 6.2%, right in the middle of the +5% +/-5% range we have seen for the past 9 months:
Finally, let’s take our first look at what this likely means for the unemployment rate in the next several months:
In this case I think it is obvious that the increasing number of initial and continuing claims suggests at least preliminarily that the unemployment rate is likely to move higher in the next few months.
In short, a jobs economy that is slowly weakening, with a slight increase in people being laid off, and finding it increasingly difficult to find new employment, but not enough of a weakeneing at this point to mean recession in the next few months.
