Another Stall Warning from the New Claims Data

The data for new weekly claims for unemployment insurance are out for the week ending Sept. 5. New claims from that week were at the same level with revised estimates from the week before (884,000) on a seasonally-adjusted basis for the U.S. as a whole. Without seasonal adjustment, claims rose by about 20,000.

California accounted for over a fifth of those actually receiving benefits nationally, a disproportionate share, based on data from the prior week (the latest available). The California share has floated around a fifth for some time. The chart below for California - as with the national data - suggests a stall.

As usual, the latest claims data can be found at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.