New Unemployment Claims Suggest Labor Market Doldrums

As we have been doing on a weekly basis, we today look at the data on new claims for unemployment insurance (through Sept. 19) as a proxy for labor market and economic activity. On that basis, we seem to be in a stagnant period. At the national level on a seasonally adjusted basis, there was a slight increase in weekly claims to 870,000 on a preliminary basis. Without adjustment, the increase was somewhat higher. 

California data also show a small uptick without adjustment. (Adjusted data are not available at the state level.) California continues to show a disproportionate share on ongoing participants in the system (lagged one week), but - as noted in a prior posting - there is significant evidence of fraud in the system.

Note: Future weekly data for California (and for the US) may be affected by the governor's decision to stop accepting new claims in order to catch up with the processing backlog.

As usual, the news release containing the data above is at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.

And if you're tired of all of this slow-motion economic stuff, here is a nostalgic reminder of when things were totally locked down back in March 2020: 

or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMibo97JYmw.