Still Not Roaring

Last week when we looked at new weekly claims for unemployment benefits in California, we noted that such claims have been stagnant for several weeks (not showing a falling trend). And now the latest numbers show an uptick for the week ended July 24th. Of course, there are other measures of state economic performance but this one - which seems stuck at the 60,000-ish level when we would like to see it go back to the pre-pandemic 40,000-ish level - doesn't indicate the economy is "roaring back." We also noted last week that the governor seems to have dropped the roaring back slogan.

One cloud over the economy is the rising coronavirus case rate:

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/california-covid-cases.html

The number of cases seems to be heading for a repeat of last summer, although it is far below the winter surge that occurred before vaccinations became widely available. The good news is that the death rate remains low, thanks in part to the vaccines which seem to make symptoms less severe for vaccinated individuals who experience "break-through" disease. Vaccination rates are also highest among the elderly population.

As noted, UC and now CSU will have a vaccine mandate. The governor has a vaccine/testing mandate for state workers and health care workers:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMKrm94Lt2M.

Other jurisdictions such as LA City are imposing similar regulations. Still, the California economy could suffer from the current surge, even if it is less deadly.

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