And there is a lot of whiplash with today's report.
Initial claims, and the associated 4-week moving average, fell by 10,000, but continuing claims rose by 25,000 to 1.97 million. (Including, full disclosure, yours truly)
While we are not seeing particularly high levels of layoffs, it does appear that hiring has fallen off of the proverbial cliff:
Recurring applications for US unemployment benefits rose to the highest since November 2021, extending a sharp increase over the past 1 1/2 month and signaling more people are staying out of work for longer.
Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, increased to 1.97 million in the week ended June 14, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. That was above all estimates in a Bloomberg survey.
The elevated level of continuing claims aligns with other surveys and data pointing to a slowdown in the labor market. This week a measure [Consumer confidence and consumer job availability sentiment] of job availabilities from a Conference Board survey that’s closely watched by economists fell to the lowest since March 2021.
Initial claims, however, decreased, to 236,000 in the week ended June 21, lower than economists anticipated. And the four-week moving average of new applications, a metric that helps smooth out volatility, also dipped.
What is going on here is that the pandemic made employers realize that laying off people can be costly, so we are seeing fewer layoffs, but not hiring people is almost free, so what we are seeing is an unwillingness of employers to spend money on employees.
I would expect employers to stand pat over the next month or so. (Crap!)
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