While vaccines offer a light at the end of the tunnel, the labor market will remain under pressure in the short run as 853K people filed claims in the first week of December, an increase of 137K from the prior week.
Moving in the Wrong Direction
- We can no longer think of claims being in a trend decline given the fact that they have increased in three out of the past five weeks and are higher today than at any point since September.
- Still, it could have been worse, unadjusted claims figures climbed to 947.5K, but since the seasonal factors were expecting an increase of 92K, the seasonally adjusted print resulted in an increase of “only” 137K, the largest weekly jump since March.
Continuing Claims Up Too
- In an indication of the increased difficulty people are having finding a replacement job, continuing claims rose for the first time since they hit a peak in May.
- While the details lag an additional week for continuing jobless benefits tied to the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, at least through the week of November 21, the majority of those on continuing benefits were on PUA assistance.
