Tag Archives: unemployment insurance

The BLS’s most recent labor market data is, well, troubling. Even the preferred if artificially-smooth Establishment Survey indicates that something has changed since around March. A slowdown at least, leaving more questions than answers (from President Phillips). That as much because of the other employment figures, the Household Survey. April and May, in particular, not just a slowdown but a drop in overall employee count. As I pointed out last Friday, a 2-month...

Last year did not end on a sound note. The initial rebound after 2020’s recession was supposed to be a straight line, lifting upward for the other side of the infamous “V” shape. Such hopes had been dashed, though, and as the disappointing year wound toward its own end yet another big problem loomed. In December 2020, millions of Americans still out of work were going to lose government benefits. The Department of Labor would later tally up the scale of this...

Macroeconomic slack is such an easy, intuitive concept that only Economists and central bankers (same thing) could possibly mess it up. But mess it up they have. Spending years talking about a labor shortage, and getting the financial media to report this as fact, those at the Federal Reserve, in particular, pointed to this as proof QE and ZIRP had fulfilled the monetary policy mandates – both of them. A labor shortage would’ve meant full or maximum employment, the...

The ISM’s Non-manufacturing PMI continued to decelerate from its high registered all the way back in July 2020. In that month, the headline index reached 58.1, the best since early 2019, and for many signaling that everything was coming up “V.” Since, however, it’s been a slow downward trend that, when realizing early 2019 wasn’t exactly robust, only reconfigures the very nature of this rebound. When comparing comebacks from outsized economic contractions, the best...

The economy is booming. Employment is at decade lows. Unemployment claims are at the lowest levels in 40-years. The stock market is at record highs and climbing. Consumers are more confident than they have been in a decade. Wages are finally showing signs of growth. What’s not to love? I just have one question. If things are so good, then why is America’s saving rate posting such a sharp decline? The answer is not...

Information from the Swiss Federal Social Insurance Office on the social insurance system in Switzerland: Brief Overview: HTML. Longer overview: PDF. Social Insurance Accounts with links to data, in German (Schweizerische Sozialversicherungsstatistik): PDF. Pocket statistics, in English: PDF. In German: PDF.

Initial jobless claims fell to just 234k for the week of February 4, nearly matching the 233k multi-decade low in mid-November. That brought the 4-week moving average down to just 244k, which was a new low going all the way back to the early 1970’s. Jobless claims seemingly stand in sharp contrast to other labor market figures which have been suggesting an economic slowdown for nearly two years. Unemployment insurance...