10/7/20: America's Scariest Charts Updated

Updating my series of 'America's Scariest Charts' for the latest data releases this week.

First: continued unemployment claims for data through the week of June 27th.

Continued unemployment claims fell from 18,760,000 in the week of June 20 to 18,062,000 in the week of June 27. Continued claims are now down 6,850,000 from their pandemic-period peak, which implies a decline of 978,571 per week since the peak. Based on the last two weeks' average weekly decline, it will take around 28 weeks to return continued unemployment claims to the pre-COVID19 levels.

Now, putting current crisis into historical perspective, the following chart uses log scale to show COVID19 recession experience in relation to all past recessions:

Next, new unemployment claims for the week of July 4, 2020. New claims in that week stood at 1,399,699, down slightly on the new claims in the eek prior at 1,431,343. Table below provides a summary:

Updated non-farm payrolls forecast for July 2020, based on June data for payrolls and the first data for July on changes in unemployment claims:

Average duration of unemployment is still completely swamped by the force and speed of the COVID19 onset, but is rising toward recession-consistent above-average territory: