Jobless claims: all excellent news – Offended Bear

 – by New Deal democrat

The weekly information from jobless claims continues to be good. The hypotheses that the summer season enhance was unresolved post-pandemic seasonality, plus the a number of week spike post-Beryl was all about Texas, each have held up very effectively. And that has continued to be the case in opposition to tougher YoY comparisons as the info heads into September.

Preliminary claims declined -5,000 final week to 227,000. The 4 week shifting common declined -1,750 to 230,000. Persevering with claims, with the standard one week delay, declined -13,000 to 1.838 million:

The 2 12 months chart actually pays off in exhibiting the unresolved summer season seasonality post-pandemic each in 2023 and this 12 months.

On the extra essential YoY foundation for forecasting functions, preliminary claims are down -0.4%, the 4 week common down -3.3%, and persevering with claims up solely 2.0%, the bottom YoY enhance in over 18 months:

For sure, all of those forecast that the financial enlargement will proceed within the subsequent few months.

Lastly, let’s take a look at the unemployment fee, which can be up to date tomorrow. Though I gained’t present a graph, it seems that the post-Beryl enhance in *persevering with* claims in Texas has now abated as effectively. However as a result of it continued into mid-August, it will not shock me to point out up in yet one more 0.1% enhance within the unemployment fee tomorrow. In any occasion, right here’s the replace graph of preliminary and persevering with claims (proper scale) vs. the unemployment fee (left scale):

This 12 months the unemployment fee has departed from over 50 years of just about steady precedent by not following preliminary claims specifically. What the above graph reveals me is that, absent the surge in immigration-related unemployment, the unemployment fee could be trending down in the direction of 3.8%.