Thursday, May 21, 2020

21/5/20: The Horror Show of COVID19 Unemployment


New initial claims data is out for last week, and so time to update one of my scary charts:



Here is a summary table:


At 2,174,329 new claims filed in the week ending May 16th, the lowest number in weekly new claims since the start of the COVID19 pandemic, it's quite tempting to say that things are improving in the labor markets. Alas, last week's print was greater than the entire recession period combined prints of four past recessions.

Cumulative first claims filed in the last 9 weeks now stand at 35,276,270, which amounts to 23.2 percent of the entire non-farm labor force in the U.S. at December 2019. 

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