Stall Maybe

We have been tracking new weekly claims for unemployment insurance as an indicator as to where the US and state economies are going. But, as blog readers will know, California stopped accepting new claims temporarily to try and catch up with a backlog of unprocessed claims. 

Since California is the largest state, its freeze has distorted the national data and, of course, we have no data on California itself. That said, the most recent data suggest there is a stall in the labor market. The figures ticked up a bit both on a seasonally-adjusted and unadjusted basis. The latest data are (always) at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.