Krugman: Unemployment Claims and Employment Growth

[ProSense]

Unemployment Claims and Employment Growth

This is mainly an excuse to play with some of the features of FRED, the wonderful data site of the St. Louis Fed. On the horizontal axis are quarterly averages of weekly new claims for unemployment insurance over the past decade. On the vertical axis are quarterly changes in nonfarm payrolls. If I had been more careful, I would have taken out the Census jobs somehow, or just done private payrolls. Anyway, yes there is a strong relationship. The recent fall in unemployment claims bodes well for positive job growth; however, we’d really want to see numbers in the low 300s or below; only then would we be seeing the kind of job growth needed to climb out of our deep jobs hole in any reasonable length of time.

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[ProSense]

1. No comment? n/t

[BklnDem75]

2. Too soon

An op-ed or blog spinning this as bad news needs to be made first.

[impik]

5. Why would anyone comment on anything even half positive? You take their life-line away.

[mkultra]

3. yeah, the summary of this data is too innocuous,

Someone will need to show up and spin in negative for this thread to fire up.

In summary, new UI claims have dropped pretty significantly which is good while jobs numbers are rising. Numbers still need to move more to get us in position to climb out.

[ProSense]

4. Yeah,

optimism is frowned upon.

[Safetykitten]

6. So what is is projected unemployment rate for the next report?

[jtuck004]

7. From briefing.com

Date ET Release For Actual Briefing.com Consensus Prior

Jan 07 08:30 Unemployment Rate Dec 9.9% 9.8% 9.8

here...

Also, the BLS is adding 5 years unemployed to the survey starting the 1st. They previously cut it off at two years, but due to the increasing numbers of long-term unemployed they increasing that limit.