Thursday, April 21, 2011

Continued marginal improvement in the labor market


Although weekly claims (chart below) recently have ticked up a bit, perhaps the more important news is that, as the chart above shows, the number of people receiving unemployment insurance has hit a new post-recession low. Progress is slow, but it's still progress.

1 comment:

Benjamin Cole said...

OT, but probably of keen interest to Scott Grannis and others:
Dr. Perry has a post today about a new NY Fed research paper on reserves. The thought is that interest on reserves is a new Fed tool, and that is why we do not have any inflation now. The banks are not lending out the money.

This dovetails with economist Scott Sumner's sentiments that we should reduce interest on reserves, or possibly even charge a minor fee, so as to encourage the banks to start lending.

Anecdotally, I just heard from the former Chamber of Commerce in Park City, Utah that he has received unsolicited calls from his bank asking if he needed a loan, re-fi etc.