New Claims in CA Still Marching to a Different Drummer

The data on new weekly claims for unemployment compensation benefits have been released through the week ending March 7. We have been tracking these claims as an index of the direction of the labor market and economic activity.

At the national level, claims are down from the prior week, whether measured on a seasonally-adjusted or unadjusted basis. For California, things haven't looked so good. In fact, after a plateauing for a couple of weeks, new claims rose.

The various loosenings of lockdown rules in the state that have been recently announced may realign California with the rest of the US in the weeks to come. We will have to see. As a previous post today noted, the UCLA Anderson Forecast is generally optimistic about future trends.

 

As always, the latest new claims data are at: https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf