- by New Deal democrat
It’s Thursday, which typically means it’s time for the weekly initial and continuing jobless claims update. As we all know, the Federal government has shut down, because there is no budget for this fiscal year that began yesterday.
BUT, I went back and checked, and during the extended government shutdown in 2013, initial jobless claims were reported, and they were also reported at least for one week during the 2018-19 shutdown as well.
Which makes sense, because they are simply compiled by adding up reports from the 50 States plus DC and Puerto Rico, and then using a seasonal adjustment.
But there has been no report this morning.
As usual, my impulse is to find a workaround, which in this case is to get the raw data from the various States’ Departments of Labor or similar. While I have neither the time nor the patience to do this for all jurisdictions, if enough of the bigger States publish their information, we should be able to arrive at a fairly reasonable estimate.
So far this morning none of the States I have checked, have updated their information for the last week. I will check later today, and if by then they have updated with claims through the week of September 27, I will follow up with a second post. Here’s hoping . . . .
In the meantime, via Carl Quintanilla, here is the latest graph on how the AI Boom (or bubble) in the stock market is fueling spending by the top 10% of consumers, which is what is keeping the economy afloat:
