New jobless claims came in at the highest level since October 2021 for a second consecutive week, in a sign of loosening in the labor market. The first-time filings for unemployment benefits reached a higher-than-expected 264,000 last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The four-week moving average of the volatile indicator also rose to 255,750 — the most since November 2021. The increase comes amid layoffs in banking and tech, as well as slowing demand for temporary workers, according to Bloomberg.
- Continuing claims, though, declined to 1.76 million in the week through June 10, indicating workers have been able to find new work.
By Cate Chapman, Editor at LinkedIn News
BY PARKER ROSS
Initial #jobless #claims remained modestly elevated during the week ending June 17, unchanged at a seasonally adjusted (sa) 264k (cons. 259k), moving the four-week average up to 256k from 247k.
However, the 4-week average of non-seasonally adjusted (nsa) initial claims moved up to 14% above its pre-COVID average (i.e., 2018 to 2019) from 9.1% the week before and up from -17% below in mid-January.
Notably, jobless claims increased the most in #California (+6.4k) w/w, where the labor market has been #cooling much faster than the rest of the U.S.
Meanwhile, continuing claims for regular state programs (i.e., repeat filers for unemployment insurance) declined by 13k during the week ending June 10 to a seasonally adjusted 1,759k (cons. 1,785k), moving the four-week average down to 1,770k from 1,778k.
The 4-week average of non-seasonally adjusted continuing claims also moved up to 5.4% above its pre-COVID average from 4.1% the week before and up from -17% below in mid-January.
While both the seasonally adjusted and unadjusted initial claims data continued to trend higher, a curious divergence has grown between the SA (lower) and NSA (higher) continuing claims data. This is important because the trend in continuing claims tells us if #workers who have lost their #jobs are able to quickly find another one.
Altogether, the claims data suggests the #labor #market is continuing to normalize from an extremely tight starting point.
#ArchEmployee