Another 3.17 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, the latest data out Thursday shows.
That’s slightly worse than the 3 million claims economists expected, and brings the total over the course of the COVID crisis to more than 33 million.
For the week ended May 2, the four-week moving average is 4.17 million. Last week was revised marginally higher to 3.85 million.
The latest claims data comes a day after ADP said US firms cut 20.24 million jobs last month. It was an astounding print, even as it was expected and even as it didn’t capture the true scope of the malaise due to the cutoff on the survey period.
Small and midsized businesses were disproportionately affected, ADP’s data showed.
Separately, a survey released Wednesday by the Society for Human Resource Management suggested more than half of America’s small businesses will exhaust their capacity to keep going within six months.
The jobless claims figures serve as an ongoing, higher frequency reminder that the US economy is by no means out of the proverbial woods. As noted above, the 7-week total for claims (i.e., capturing the period defined by the crisis and attendant lockdown protocols) is now nearly 33.5 million.
You should note that while the trend continues to be lower, last week’s figure is still more than four times larger than the pre-COVID record set in 1982.
The updated visual below shows how jobless claims in and around the virus recession compare to the old record set nearly four decades ago.
All eyes now turn to Friday’s jobs report.
As if we don’t know what it’s going to show.
Given our current backdrop where 90% of the US population holds 30% of the wealth of the US, and 10% of the population holds the remaining 70% of the wealth, when you look at both deflationary and inflationary factors, and anticipated additional government fiscal and monetary policy, what does the forward path look like?
Very difficult to put all of this together and chart a forward thesis. However, I think the current estimate of short/intermediate term deflation is massively underestimated.
You still have headlines out there like “Historic rate of layoffs may be slowing…” Too bad main stream media isn’t knowledgeable enough to point out the obvious as H does that this weeks number is still 4x larger than the pre-Covid record. Unfortunately, I still know people who have yet to be able to get through to the unemployment office to file their claim.
What is even more obvious is the more people there are unemployed the less people there are employed…thus the numbers get smaller (diminishing returns) as there is a residual volume that will never be unemployed unless this system comes to a total standstill …Rational thought says this is not compatible with the concept of life on Earth…
Smaller engine powering the freight train/ carrying the load…. sound familiar?