It's Jobless Thursday

Initial unemployment claims rose to 220,000 last week. 

The prior week's historically numbers was likely a statistical aberration resulting from seasonal adjustments.

The number of people filing new claims for unemployment benefits remained near pandemic lows last week as employers continued to hold on to their workers in a tight labor market.

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, totaled a seasonally adjusted 222,000 for the week that ended Nov. 27, the Labor Department said Thursday. The data followed the prior week’s report showing the lowest number of new claims in 52 years.

Seasonal adjustments contributed to last week’s low number, with the sharp decline likely overstating the amount of progress in the labor market’s return to pre-pandemic levels.

This week’s report lowered the four-week moving average, which smooths out statistical volatility, to 238,750. The four-week average has continued to drift downward since September, after a brief uptick related to the surge from the Delta variant of Covid-19.

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The steady decline in claims this fall reflects employers eagerly trying to hire and retain workers who are quitting jobs at a record rate. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal estimate that the November’s jobs report, to be released Friday, will show that the U.S. economy created 573,000 jobs last month, following a gain of more than 500,000 in October.

As always, I'll take the under.

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The overall U.S. employment total remains nearly 3% lower than before the pandemic, with roughly four million fewer workers. That is due to a combination of older workers retiring and prime-age workers only slowly returning to the labor force because of pandemic-related issues such as inadequate availability of child-care services and fear of infection, economists say.

There are still about 4 million missing workers, and some of them are never coming back,

The path forward is unclear to me.