For the first time in about 6 weeks, initial unemployment claims rose last week.
It's not a huge bump, 13,000 to 196,000, but this is still significantly lower than the before times.
What's more, the 4-week moving average, which smooths out the blips, is still down.
Needless to say, there are a lot of people out of the workforce either because of long Covid, or because they are dead of Covid, so employers are loath to attempt to replace workers in what is still a tight job market.
Good:
Worker filings for unemployment benefits rose last week but remained historically low, reflecting a tight labor market despite company layoff announcements.
Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, increased by 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 196,000 last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. In 2019, when the labor market was also tight, claims averaged about 220,000 a week.
The four-week moving average of weekly claims, which smooths out volatility, fell slightly to 189,250.
Unemployment claims have remained near prepandemic lows in recent months despite a wave of corporate layoff announcements in industries such as technology, real estate and finance. Businesses in service industries such as restaurants, hospitals and nursing homes have continued to hire, driving a jobs boom that added 1.1 million jobs over the past three months.
Conventional wisdom is that unemployment is a trailing indicator of recession, but I am pretty sure that the Federal Reserve will get the recession that they want.
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