Thursday, May 26, 2011

Unemployment rolls have shrunk by 30%


The news that weekly claims last week were a little higher than expected is relatively insignificant (actual claims are flat over the past 3 months), and is greatly overshadowed by the ongoing decline in the number of people receiving unemployment insurance. Since early last year, the unemployment rolls have shrunk by about 30%, from 11.5 million to just under 7 million, and this is a trend that should continue. What this means is that more people are finding work, and more people are facing increasing incentives (having lost their benefits) to find and accept jobs.

2 comments:

T said...

Why don't you plot employment from Jan 2010 up til today and compare with your graph above. You will see about 2 million have been added. Where are the other 2.5 million?

McKibbinUSA said...

However, the US employment to population ratio continues to decline -- more at:

http://wjmc.blogspot.com/2011/05/us-employment-to-population-ratio.html