Weekly claims for unemployment came in as expected, and they were almost exactly what they have been averaging so far this year, so there hasn't been much progress in this area for awhile. But considering all the hand-wringing about the U.S. getting a case of recession contagion from the Eurozone, it's very good news: no sign at all of any deterioration in the U.S. economy as of last week. The good news here is that there's no bad news.
Meanwhile, there continues to be significant progress in the number of people receiving unemployment insurance: 1.26 million fewer people today are "on the dole" than were a year ago, and that's an impressive decline of 18.3%. And it's ongoing, especially since more and more people are going to be exhausting their "emergency claims" benefits in the months to come. This represent a positive change on the margin in the incentives that people have to find and accept a new job, and changes in incentives can be powerful factors affecting the evolution of the economy.
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ReplyDeleteThe US employment to population ratio is showing a two-month increase on both a monthly and annual basis -- more at:
ReplyDeletehttp://wjmc.blogspot.com/2012/06/us-employment-to-population-ratio-marks.html
The employment situation has apparently been improving over the past couple of months...
The 52 week moving average of non seasonally adjusted jobless claims dropped 766 to 386,960. The time to worry is when this moving average turns up in a concerted effort. The last 3 recessions saw this moving average turn up 4 to 10 months earlier
ReplyDeletethan when the economy went into recession.
Has anyone besides me noticed that Gallup Poll's daily unemployment rate is now at 7.8%, and that its job creation index is its second-highest since the recession at -23 even though a horrible jobs report was just announced a week ago?
ReplyDeleteI have been paying close attention to Gallup Poll's daily unemployment rate and job creation index. The June report is going to look better.
ReplyDeleteIn the last 2 weeks, my office hired 30 new college grads in our group. Other departments at the company are increasing hiring just as fast.