Jobs: More Shuffle

Today’s weekly report on new claims for unemployment insurance don’t tell us much. The data shows a drop of 14,000 to 442,000 last week, but mot of that gain comes from a change in the seasonality adjustment which has been re-calibrated. That makes it tough to tell whether the improvement is a statistical quirk or whether it reflects a real movement.

Either way the level of claims remains doggedly well above healthy levels, and there is simply no sign anywhere in the numbers that businesses are re-hiring at sufficient enough a pace to lower the unemployment rate significantly any time soon.

We are truly stuck in a jobless recovery.

Given that there is no abundance of new jobs, the fact that the number of people collecting ongoing unemployment aid dropped from 11.65 million to 11.17 million is of no comfort. We have to infer that any change in that figure is driven more by workers simply dropping from the system rather than a hopeful uptick in the work available.

I still do not see any immediate improvement in the jobs outlook. Activity may be gaining some steam – all the measures of production and so on point in that direction, but that increase is coming from extended hours and capital improvements, not from an expanded workforce.