- by New Deal democrat
This morning’s jobless claims report shows that the trend of “less worse” news has at least temporarily ended, at a level of about 150,000 higher than the worst weekly levels of the Great Recession.
On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims rose for the second week in a row, by 20,140 to 857,148. After seasonal adjustment (which is far less important than usual at this time), claims were unchanged at 884,000, tied for their “best” reading since the pandemic began. The 4 week moving average declined by 21,750 to a new pandemic low of 970,750:
Continuing claims, on both an un-adjusted and seasonally adjusted basis rose from their pandemic lows of last week, by 54,472 to 13,197,059, and by 93,000 to 13,385,000 respectively:
This is a little over half of their worst levels at the beginning of May.
The important takeaway is that there has been little downward movement in new jobless claims over the past five weeks. The jobs market is at best improving slowly at very depressed levels.
