US jobless claims were a nonevent Thursday.
So, why am I wasting my time and, much more importantly, your time, documenting the release?
Good question. I don’t have a good answer, per se, but I do have an answer: This release covered NFP survey week and on top of that, market participants are keen to parse each incremental labor market update given the DOGE drama.
With that excuse, the initial filers headline for the week to March 15 was 223,000, bang on consensus.
The steady readout suggests claims have stabilized (again) after erasing a big spike late last month.
The four-week average is 227,000. That’s actually the highest since early November, but as the figure shows, these are subdued levels.
Continuing claims were 1.892 million in the week to March 8, slightly ahead of consensus. That series continues to loiter at the highest levels since 2021, but so far anyway hasn’t translated into any kind of dramatic deterioration in the overall labor market.
Finally, initial claims in the DMV area (i.e., the DOGE “blast radius”) dropped, as did claims in D.C. specifically.
Again, I realize this doesn’t make for exciting reading, but it felt obligatory under the circumstances.
A guess on my part. Businesses were burned post pandemic with difficulty hiring. They are more hesitant to lay off workers than previously. And employees are more hesitant to switch. Turnover is therefore low. So continuing claims are up, but new claims remain low. I would posit this is a razor’s edge equilibrium. Probably echoes the housing market, low quantity demanded and low quantity supplied. Things will probably break out this year. My guess is unemployment rate will eventually rise this year.
It hasn’t hit the data yet. It will. Severance packages delay the trigger for being counted among the unemployed. I know a lot of people in areas of employ that are affected by DOGE, directly or secondarily. Nearly all of their companies are laying off and they are expecting multiple waves once they have a better sense of the loss of funding/business.