US jobless claims were — umm — very, very low in the week to January 4, according to Wednesday’s update, published a day early ahead of Thursday’s holiday.
At just 201,000, the headline initial filers print was the lowest since the mid-February. Consensus was looking for 215,000.
Over the past two weeks, claims have fallen by 19,000, and are now down 59,000 from the local peak in early-October, when bad weather drove a sharp uptick.
The four-week moving average collapsed to just 213,000, the lowest since April.
Continuing claims, meanwhile, ticked up to 1.867 million for the week to December 28, slightly above estimates. Recall that the ongoing filers series retreated by the most in nearly a year during the prior week.
This is still “holiday” data, and as such it’d be a mistake to read too much into it (this holiday season feels like it’s been going on for six months, or maybe that’s just my voluntary social isolation talking), but the initial claims headline continues to make a mockery of recession banter, assuming you can find any.
If you ask Chris Waller, the US labor market shows rates are restrictive, though. “I believe policy is still restrictive in most cases,” he said Wednesday, at an OECD event in Paris. He mentioned the US jobs market as an example of an arena where rate hikes are manifesting.
And yet, Waller also said he’s “seen nothing in the data or forecasts that suggests the labor market will dramatically weaken over coming months.”
Does the federal government have this claims data a few days ahead of time and just release it normally on Thursday mornings? Or did they change how they obtained the data / “smoothed” the data with one less day of information to be able to release it on Wednesday?
Job market seems back to pre-pandemic levels, looking at hires, quits, initial, continuing. Only openings is elevated above 2019 levels. On a macro level that seems neither bad nor good. Some specific industries and the unemployed therein have it worse.
Some watch temporary/contract staffing as a supposedly more sensitive/leading indicator. Idea being companies flex up/down with temps/contractors before making the commitment to hire/fire permanents. Here is an interesting chart source. https://americanstaffing.net/research/asa-data-dashboard/asa-staffing-index/#tab:fiftytwo-week-chart Note gig work may have affected this.
Thanks for the link. A couple times when my daughter has been on the prowl for a change her head-hunter has hired her for six months, paid her, provided benefits but only on trial. When I lived in Cedar Falls Iowa there were two firms that maintained stables of qualified professionals of all types just to serve Deere. They would do projects and return to the agencies. I did a study for the big guys to see how much risk that created for the users of those temps. I can’t say what I found. Interesting problem, though.
JL – Thanks for the link. Back when I believed that economic data mattered, I also carefully monitored the temporary workers stats in the monthly U/P reports for the reason you mentioned.