Initial Unemployment claims stay above 330,000
In a post 3 days ago, I referred to an article by Doug Short on his graph for the ratio of initial unemployment claims to the civilian labor force. He made the point that the ratio may have already hit a trough. If that turns out to be true, weekly initial unemployment claims will trend above 330,000 into the future. Today’s new data on initial unemployment claims supports that view. For the week ending February 8th, the seasonally adjusted initial claims were 339,000. The consensus forecast was for 330,000. The 4-week moving average moved up to 336,750.
lol on this post.
Hi John C,
If the civilian labor force rises, initial unemployment claims would then rise just to keep the same ratio… assuming that the ratio has bottomed out.
The ratio would be lower if there weren’t relatively so many discouraged workers. The trough might be more apparent in that light.
lol, again. Intial jobless claims are heavily impacted my many such areas. That is why when they generally fall below 350,000, job growth can boost to many different levels with no real move with the claims themselves.
Notice that the “real” low level of claims doesn’t occur until late in the expansion. Continuing claims is nearing 00’s peak low. Which is another sign of weakness the 00’s expansion was in investment.
You keep on worrying about “discouraged” workers, but that has faded. If a worker won’t take a job because they don’t like the pay, they aren’t discouraged”, they are stubborn. Saw that alot in the 90’s and 00’s expansions as well, especially the latter.
Hi John,
That is the point though, that the expansion is nearing its end. There is still concern that the unemployment rate is actually higher than reported, for example…
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/02/and-the-real-us-jobless-rate-is/
They see a rate that is 0.5% higher.