When the rate of change in continuing jobless claims surpasses 30% over a nine-month period, it has consistently aligned with a recession. Whether we're entering a new era or not remains uncertain. pic.twitter.com/GFuP9oMgFH
— Guilherme Tavares (@i3_invest) June 13, 2024
Indeed, the relationship between jobless claims and recessions is an important economic indicator. While the exact threshold of 30% isn’t universally agreed upon, there are notable patterns to consider:
- Unemployment Rate and Initial Claims:
- Historically, changes in unemployment have served as good indicators of recessions. Specifically, two labor market variables are often examined:
- Year-over-year changes in initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims: These tend to rise at the beginning of a recession.
- The unemployment rate: It has also been a reliable indicator.
- Combining these indicators with lagged term spreads (which predict recessions at the one-year horizon) can enhance their performance.
- Historically, changes in unemployment have served as good indicators of recessions. Specifically, two labor market variables are often examined:
- Continuing Jobless Claims:
- The percentage change in continuing jobless claims has been associated with recessions. When this change exceeds certain thresholds, it signals economic stress.
- For instance, a recession consistently occurred when the percentage change in continuing claims rose above 10%2.
- Since June 2020, the three-month change in continuing claims has been negative, but it recently flipped to positive and is approaching the 10% level.
- Recent Trends:
In summary, while no fixed threshold exists, monitoring both initial and continuing jobless claims provides valuable insights into economic health. Whether we’re entering a new era remains uncertain, but these indicators warrant close attention.
Democrats Celebrate More Americans Working Three Or More Jobs To Make Ends Meet.
Take, for example, an economy that has three people and three jobs. Such an economy could have three people each with one job and no unemployed. Alternatively, such an economy could have one person working three jobs and two people unemployed. The May jobs report shows a trend moving toward the latter scenario instead of the former.
The government tracks and publishes both sets of job data — that’s how we know the May jobs data was really bad. From the pro-Biden media, you hear only about the first set of data, which shows the increase in “all employees” of about 270,000 from April to May.
The problem is, that figure double-counts (or triple- or quadruple-counts) people who have to work more than one job to make ends meet. This is because a single person counts as a different “employee” for each separate employer. In other words, the data set that the White House and left-leaning media point to tells us little about how many Americans are actually working.
That information is contained in a separate report, called “Employment Level,” which is largely ignored by pro-Biden media. As this report explains, “[e]ach employed person is counted only once, even if he or she holds more than one job.” This data set tells us how many Americans actually have jobs at a given point in time. From April to May, this number decreased by more than 400,000 people. In other words, in May 2024, 400,000 fewer Americans had jobs than in April 2024.
Plus: “To completely reconcile Biden’s so-called May job ‘gains’ with the even larger decrease in the number of Americans actually employed during the exact same period, one must conclude that many people are taking on three or more jobs to make ends meet.”
Biden: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
American worker: “Well, sure — under Trump I only had one job but now I have three!”