Initial Claims
For the weeks ending August 29, September 5, September 12, and September 17 there were 884,000, 893,000, and 870,000 and 866,000 seasonally-adjusted claims respectively according to the Department of Labor.
Given margins of error on seasonally adjusted data there has been no progress for four weeks.
Continued Claims
Continued claims lag initial claims by a week.
For the weeks ending August 29, and September 5, and September 17 there were 13,554,000, 12,747,000, and 12,580,000 seasonally-adjusted claims respectively.
The downward slope (pace of progress) has not changed since May. At the same pace of progress, continued claims will be above 10 million for many months.
It’s continued state claims that determine the official unemployment rate, not that anyone of intelligence believes the BLS number.
The reference week for the unemployment report is the week that contains the 13th of the month. That week is the week ending August 15.
For August 15, there were 14,492,000 continued claims. Yet the BLS reported said there were 13,550,000 unemployed in August.
Questioning the Unemployment Rate
There should be a minimum of 14,492,000 unemployed plus at least several more million gig and self-employed workers who do not qualify for state unemployment insurance.
The BLS says nope, just 13,550,000.
Next week is the reference week for the September jobs report.
Primary PUA Claims
Primary PUA claims are not seasonally adjusted. They lag initial claims by two weeks and continued claims by a week.
Primary PUA claims dropped substantially this week. Perhaps people just gave up because there have been no pandemic assistance checks since the end of July.
The drop could represent seasonality. For example, teachers are back to work.
Unlike state claims, PUA claims cover part-time workers.
They also cover truly unemployed workers not eligible for state claims. People in this category include the self-employed, various gig workers, and anyone who exhausted state benefits.
One either applies for state benefits or Federal PUA, not both. Although there is no double-counting, there is overlap from an unemployment rate point of view. Part-time workers are considered employed.
But some number of those 14.510million workers are genuinely unemployed. I suspect 3 million at a minimum. But they never show up in the unemployment numbers.
Heck, not even continued claims show up in the BLS numbers.
All Continued Claims
All Continued Claims, like Primary PUA claims, are not seasonally adjusted. They also lag initial claims by two weeks and continued claims by a week.
The total for the latest week is 26.04 million. This should realistically feed the U-6 unemployment rate but it does not come close.
Lost Pandemic Benefits
Pandemic benefits expired on July 25. Everyone in any program received $600 weekly benefits.
The average number of All Continued Claims since July 25 is 28.29 million. In a few days the 10th check will go missing.
Lost pandemic benefits = 28.29 million * $600 per week * 10 weeks = $152.77 billion.
That’s money that would have been sent but wasn’t.
BLS Methodology Change
For the reporting period ending August 29 (release date September 3) the BLS made a methodology change.
As a result of the change, the BLS reported 881,000 initial claims (now revised to 884,000). Under the previous methodology, the BLS would have reported 1,010,000 claims.
The BLS did not back adjust the data and the change is suspect as well. Even if the change is accurate, the seasonal charts all reflect disjointed data.
For further discussion, please see Unemployment Claims Improve But It’s a Manipulation Mirage.
Related Posts
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- Women Lost More Jobs But Have Gained Them Back Faster
- The Recovery is Led by Part-Time, Not Full-Time Employment
Either there is massive pandemic claims fraud, massive unemployment undercounting by the BLS, or both.
The above articles, especially #1 and #4 suggest huge undercounting by the BLS, possibly accompanied by massive fraud as well.
I suspect both.
Mish
California still has Disneyland shut down.
New unemployment claims were up for the third week in a row to 870 thousand.
Think about that for a moment Mish. Is this our new normal? Before Covid our normal was about 235-250 thousand per week. Now the stock market takes off and everyone is happy if it is not a million per week, PER WEEK!
The lower 90% of Americans are in deep frigging shit. While the upper 10% are doing anywhere from okay to WONDER fucking FABULOUS!
And people think this will end well?
At this point I am going to say that socialism is the least of the rights problems.
Well 870 thousand newly fired people in a week is 869,000 new votes for Biden. Unless you think the now unemployed are going to vote for the party that unemployed them. Want to bet that next Thursday the new claims go back over a million? It is clearly no longer about Covid but businesses and citizens that reached the end of their ropes and now have to let go.
THIS is the start of the real Trump GOP deperssion. It is going to get ugly now.
Four restaurants by my office have closed permanently – including two national franchises. The places that are busy are the really high end steakhouse and the $3 Taco joint.
something i learned recently is not all states push people to PUA once their claims have exhausted. been working on modeling the reality on the ground
May not push them there but the claims are supposed to go to state benefits first. But yes, we are at the point of claims expiring. Will take a further look. Thanks.
Thanks for your reply
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Can the landlords have their property back yet?
I think CA got rid of a lot of PUA claims that were bogus, hopefully no one got a check. Looks like they caught it early in the game.
PUA claims just dropped now. Benefits ended July 25.
My mistake, I thought only the extra 600 ended July 25, but gig workers and such were still collection some benefits via regular PUA
The next wave of initial claims is coming. This time from companies that took the PPP offer.