We have been using new weekly claims for unemployment insurance as an index of the state of the labor market. New weekly claims rose in the week ended December 12 compared to the prior week in California as the chart above indicates. Given the increased severity of the lockdown restrictions and the increase in coronavirus cases in the state, this outcome is not surprising. At the national level, without seasonal adjustment, new claims fell. So California went up while the rest of the US went down. On a seasonally-adjusted basis, US claims rose. Of course, it is unclear how relevant pre-coronavirus seasonal factors are in the current situation.
Overall, a stall.
As always, the latest new claims data are at
https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.
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