End of the Beginning - Part 9

We continue our regular labor market analysis of new weekly claims for unemployment insurance. As the chart below shows, on a national basis new claims remained remarkably high, but lower than at the earlier peak, through the week ended July 4th. In absolute amounts, new claims were 1.4 million, seasonally adjusted or unadjusted, about the same level as the prior week.

The total number of recipients of unemployment benefits continues to decline, which suggests more people were getting jobs than losing them. California remains with a disproportionately high share of unemployment benefits recipients.

[Click on image to clarify.]

The latest data on unemployment insurance claims are at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.

A separate "JOLTS" survey - which is much lagged - shows that the job openings rate (vacancy rate) began to rise in May and new hires exceeded terminations at that time. See below. In short, both surveys indicate that there began to be a turnaround in May. Just a reminder, however, that in absolute terms, the situation looks very bad. And more recent reversals of opening up policies around the country in response to health data could produce a stall at current levels.

[Click on image to clarify.]

The latest JOLTS data are at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf.