Initial And Continuing Jobless Claims: Back To Being “Less Awful”

This morning’s initial and continued jobless claims resume the trend of “less awful” numbers.

New jobless claims fell to under 1,000,000 for the first time on an un-adjusted basis - 984,192, to be specific (gold in the graph below). After seasonal adjustment, they declined 249,000 to a new pandemic low of 1,186,000 (blue), also a new pandemic low:

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.