This morning’s initial and continued jobless claims resume the trend of “less awful” numbers.
Continuing claims (red, right scale), reported for the prior week, also made a new pandemic low of 16,107,000.
All of these remain at far worse levels than even at their worst during the Great Recession. Further, that there are still 1 million *new* layoffs a week almost 5 months into the pandemic indicates that longer-term damage is being done to the economy, I.e., if there were a vaccine tomorrow, there would be no “V-shaped” immediate recovery back to pre-pandemic levels. Almost all of which has been totally unnecessary, and has been caused by incompetent leadership at the very top.
But after about a month of stalling, on a very very very relative basis, I will take this “good” news.