May 4, 2023 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Initial claims for unemployment rose by the most in six weeks while continuing claims fell in the week ended April 29, the Labor Department reported this morning. Initial unemployment claims rose by 13,000 to 242,000. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg were looking for 240,000 initial claims. Continuing claims, which include people who have received unemployment benefits for a week or more and are a good indicator of how hard it is for people to find work after losing their jobs, fell by 38,000 to 1.81 million in the week ended April 22. That marked the biggest drop since July. If you think that a rise in unemployment and a weakening of the labor market is a good thing, as the Federal Reserve does, because it sets the stage for a decline in inflation, then today’s data had its negative aspects too. A separate report out today showed U.S. worker productivity declined in the first quarter by more than forecast and labor costs accelerated. That’s a strong argument for higher inflation.
October 18, 2022 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
On Monday, October 17, Microsoft (MSFT) confirmed that it had laid off nearly 1,000 employees across multiple divisions, including Xbox division staff this week.
August 2, 2022 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Job openings in the United States fell in June to a nine-month low. The number of available positions decreased to 10.7 million in the month from an upwardly revised 11.3 million in May, the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed Tuesday. The 605,000 decline was the biggest since April 2020. I’m sure this data has caught the Federal Reserve’s eye.
November 4, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
New claims for unemployment in regular state programs well for the week ended October 30 to a seasonally adjusted 269,000.
March 11, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
New claims for unemployment dropped to 712,000 in regular state programs in the week ended March 6, the Labor Department reported today. That drop of 42,000 from the prior week was a bigger drop than economists had projected. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg were looking for 725,000 new claims in regular state programs.
February 1, 2021 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
Granted this is just a projection, and that nobody really knows what the economy will look like over the next three years, but it’s still depressing news. The nonpartisan–although frequently reviled by the Trump administration–Congressional Budget Office projects that the U.S. unemployment rate won’t fall to pre-pandemic levels until 2024. The office says that the unemployment rate will fall to a still elevated 5.7% in 2021, to 5$ in 2022, and to 4.7% in 2023. From 2026 to 2031 the unemployment rate will average 4.1%, well above the 3.7% it average in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. The unemployment rate was a historically low 3.5% in February 2020
October 8, 2020 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The number of initial claims for unemployment for the week ended October 3 was 840,000, the Department of Labor reported this morning. That was above the 820,000 projected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. And up, er, I mean down, from the 849,000 new claims...
July 2, 2020 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The U.S economy added 4.8 million jobs last month in June. And the official unemployment rate fell to 11.1%. That's the good news. Unfortunately, the gains in jobs and the drop in unemployment are based on data from a survey that measured conditions in the week ended...
May 31, 2020 | Daily JAM |
...that the big news of the week will be Friday's report on April jobs. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg are forecasting that the economy lost another 8 million jobs in May. That's after the loss of 20.5 million jobs in April. These economists project that the...
May 7, 2020 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Initial claims for unemployment totaled 3.17 million for the week ended May 2, the Labor Department reported today. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected 3 million new claims for the week. This week's total was down from the 3.85 million initial claims filed...
May 5, 2020 | Daily JAM |
One minute the Standard & Poor's was sailing along, up 1.91% at 3 p.m. New York time. And the next minute stocks were trending downward with the S&P 500 up only 0.75% at 3:42 p.m. The index closed ahead 0.90% for the day. What happened? Federal Reserve Vice...
November 29, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Yesterday, Wednesday November 28, U.S. stocks saw a huge bounce with the Standard & Poor's 500 climbing 2.3% on a speech by Federal Reserve Chairman "suggesting" that the Fed might slow the speed and limit the number of interest rate increases in 2019. Today,...
