Going the Wrong Way

Every Thursday, we check into the new weekly claims data release to see what can be said about the California labor market. In the recent period, it has been at best a stall. Now, presumably thanks to the pandemic/lockdown effects, we seem to be going the wrong way.

New claims for the state are up notably in the week ended January 9 compared tot he previous week. The same wrong-way trend was reported at the national level, whether on a seasonally-adjusted or unadjusted basis.

The latest data are always at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf