This week completed the most challenging YoY comparisons with last summer. Recall that I suspect there may be some unresolved post-pandemic seasonality in these numbers, as this year’s increase starting in late spring has been close to a mirror image of last year’s increase. So if there is some real new weakness in jobless claims, the last three weeks were the most likely times it would show up.

And the result this week was not too bad. Initial claims declined -10,000 to 235,000. The four week average increased 250 to 235,500. With the typical one week delay, continuing claims declined -9,000 to 1.851 million:

More importantly, on a YoY basis weekly claims were up a slight 1.7% (4,000), and the four week average was unchanged. Continuing claims were up 4.9%, still close to their recent YoY low comparisons:

This is a neutral result compared with the most challenging comparisons of last summer. Specifically, it does not suggest a recession in the near future.

Finally, looking ahead to next week’s unemployment rate for July, we see that the monthly numbers were about equal to June’s but higher than earlier this year:

This suggests some further upward pressure on the unemployment rate in coming months (recalling that the big wave of immigration in the last several years is almost certainly distorting that comparison upward). It’s possible the “Sahm rule” will be triggered as a result, but recall that the comparison rate for that rule is also going to increase 0.1% this month as well.

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