Confused about the US labour market numbers? You should be.
Every Thursday I track the US jobless insurance claims - initial claims and continuing claims. Historically these have been pretty useful. But these are strange days for the indicator.
Take this week's numbers: initial jobless claims fell 42k to just 712k, and continuing claims fell 193k to 4.144mn. That sounds pretty good. But look down at the bottom of the report and you'll find a quite different set of numbers. The total number of people claiming benefits jumped 2.087mn on the week to reach a staggering 20.116mn. This time last year it was 2.137mn. And whilst the total number of claimants fell fairly consistently until the end of October, they've since stabilized, and since January they've been quietly and gently rising.
What's did the damage this week is Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which jumped 1.058mn on the week to 8.387m, and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation rose 986k on the week to 5.455mn.
Since the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation numbers are more than three times as many as those formally claiming unemployment benefit, we need to know what's happening. Which is what today's edition looks at.
