The labor market faces a long road back to normal: Morning Brief

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The U.S. labor market continues to rebound from a washout in the spring.

But the road back to anything resembling pre-COVID 19 levels still appears quite long.

On Wednesday, the BLS released its latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, which showed that job openings were up in July, layoffs were steady, but hiring slowed.

Job openings at the end of July stood just north of 6.6 million, a solid improvement from the 6 million jobs open at the end of June and up significantly from the 4.9 million jobs that were open at the end of April, the labor market’s nadir. July’s openings, however, were down sharply from 7.3 million a year ago.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/labor-market-faces-long-road-back-to-normal-morning-brief-100659030.html

But the stock market. The stock market is doing great. - Donny Dotard.

[progree]

1. If it's such a great comeback, why has continuing claims kept rising, now 29.6 M?

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS, Department of Labor, 9/10/20
https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf

In the week ending September 5, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 884,000, unchanged from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 3,000 from 881,000 to 884,000. The 4-week moving average was 970,750, a decrease of 21,750 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 750 from 991,750 to 992,500.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 9.2 percent for the week ending August 29, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the previous week's unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending August 29 was 13,385,000, an increase of 93,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up 38,000 from 13,254,000 to 13,292,000. The 4-week moving average was 13,982,000, a decrease of 523,750 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 9,500 from 14,496,250 to 14,505,750.

(snip)

UNADJUSTED DATA

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The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending August 22 was 29,605,064, an increase of 380,379 from the previous week. There were 1,591,456 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2019 ((this paragraph not seasonally adjusted, they don't have a seasonally adjusted version of this number -Progree)).

Not good that initial claims is flat in a so-called Great American Comeback. And that the total number claiming benefits is going up -- it was 27.0 million 2 weeks before. Note too the discrepancy between the 13.6 million unemployed in last Friday's jobs report (the one with the 8.4% unemployment rate), and the 29.6 million claiming benefits.