It's Jobless Thursday

Initial unemployment claims fell to 238,000, better than expectations.

I think that we have a juxtaposition of a labor shortage with the Omicron wave:

Initial filings for unemployment benefits fell for the second week in a row at the end of January, a sign the labor market is bouncing back from the temporary disruption caused by the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

The number of first-time claims decreased to a seasonally adjusted 238,000 in the week ended Jan. 29 from 261,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said Thursday. Claims had risen to 290,000 in the week ended Jan. 15 as the latest Omicron wave caused case counts to spike and millions of people called in sick.

The decline in initial claims could be a reassuring signal in advance of January’s employment report, which is expected to show job gains slowed or fell last month because of Omicron-related upheavals.

Economists say monthly employment figures could follow the same pattern as the weekly jobless claims figures: briefly rattled before rebounding.

Thursday’s jobless claims number “tells us that the hit to the labor market from the Omicron variant is short-lived,” said Gus Faucher, chief economist at the PNC Financial Services Group. “Even if we do see job losses in January we should expect to see job gains return in February.”

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expect employers added 150,000 jobs in January, though several also expect that payrolls fell last month. That would represent a sharp drop from the 537,000 monthly average job growth last year.

………

There were 10.9 million job openings in December up from 10.8 million November, according to Labor Department data released earlier this week. Layoffs and discharges fell to a record low of 1.2 million and there were 4.3 million quits in December, the report showed.

I'm not sure what is going on, but I still think that we are in strange enough times that we need to reevaluate our seasonal adjustments.