Our weekly look at new weekly claims for California unemployment insurance shows a big uptick in the first week of the new year. Is that a sign of the recession that many are expecting? Note that back in pre-pandemic early 2020, there was also an uptick. So, it may be that what we are seeing is just the end of the seasonal jump in hiring for Christmas sales. Or maybe those well-publicized high-tech layoffs are finally showing up in the data. We are still in the wait-and-see mode. We don't have seasonally-adjusted data at the state level, but at the national level - where seasonally-adjusted data are available - there was no uptick, a fact that suggests seasonality is behind the California increase in claims.
Errata: Last week's chart in this series had problems with the dates on the horizontal axis. The years and months were correct but the days were not. The problem has been corrected on this week's chart.
As always, the latest claims data are at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.
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https://ia904704.us.archive.org/3/items/new-year-outlook/seasonal.mp3
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