US Jobless Claims Give Mixed Picture With Shift in Adjustments
U.S. unemployment claims figures gave a mixed picture of the labor market amid government changes to seasonal adjustments to account for distortions from the pandemic.
Initial jobless claims in state programs totaled 881,000 in the week ended Aug. 29, according to Labor Department data Thursday. That follows 1.01 million in the prior week, a figure that’s not directly comparable because of the change to methodology.
Unadjusted figures gave a different impression. Before any seasonal adjustments, claims rose last week, driven largely by California. And applications under the separate federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program — which targets the self-employed, gig workers and others who don’t typically qualify for state programs — jumped by about 152,000 to 759,000, led almost entirely by an increase in California.
Unadjusted continuing claims fell by about 765,000 to 13.1 million, though this could potentially reflect some people who exhausted regular state benefits and are moving to a separate extended program.
More broadly, the data point to slow and uneven improvement in a still-depressed labor market. While the adjusted and unadjusted claims figures moved in different directions last week, both are declining on a four-week moving basis, which eliminates the weekly fluctuations.
But just on Wednesday, United Airlines Holdings Inc. and Ford Motor Co. announced layoffs, adding to news of hundreds of thousands of job cuts or buyouts from major companies in recent weeks. New COVID-19 infections still number in the hundreds of thousands a week, a figure that while lower than in July, indicates that it will be a while before Americans return in larger numbers to traveling and eating out. There are also signs of new outbreaks emerging in some states.
The decline in seasonally adjusted claims “is more of a reflection of what was really happening” with unadjusted claims in recent weeks, which had been declining more steeply than the adjusted figures, said Aneta Markowska, chief U.S. financial economist at Jefferies. “This is just really more of a catch-up to reality.”
A separate report Thursday from the Institute for Supply Management showed jobs in service industries falling at a slower pace in August.
The S&P 500 Index was headed for its biggest drop since June amid declines in high-flying technology shares. Yields on 10-year Treasuries were lower.
The government’s methodology change was made to address the wide swings in the adjusted data, which had created a gulf between the core numbers and those tweaked to iron out seasonal variations such holidays and regular factory closures and reopenings.
The overall number of continued claims in all programs — which includes regular state and the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance — rose by more than 2 million to 29.2 million in the week ended Aug. 15. That figure, though, has been inflated by states counting multiple retroactive weeks by one person instead as multiple people.
”It’s very difficult to make any hard conclusions about what one particular week’s worth of data means,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc. But in the bigger picture, there’s “still quite a huge amount of people out there that are receiving benefits.”
———
Chris Middleton, Edith Moy and Sophie Caronello contributed to this story.
———
©2020 Bloomberg News
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
In The News
Health
Voting
Employment
A quartet of researchers in the United Kingdom say while the COVID-19 pandemic forced employers and employees alike into a “mass experiment” of workplace adjustments, the real work on what the future of work will look like is only just beginning. The researchers are Oliver Mallett,... Read More
The U.S. employment situation seems to be edging closer to normalcy with the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing a 1.7% decline in teleworking employees. This indicates more people are returning to the office, but it remains uncertain whether it is fully in-person or a... Read More
WASHINGTON - The House New Democrat Coalition on Wednesday endorsed several bills its members say will modernize the nation’s infrastructure, create jobs and grow the economy. The coalition, led by Infrastructure task force co-chairs Carolyn Bourdeaux, of Georgia, and Norma Torres, of California, NDC Chair Suzan... Read More
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits dropped last week to 406,000, a new pandemic low and more evidence that the job market is strengthening as the virus wanes and economy further reopens. Thursday's report from the Labor Department showed that applications declined... Read More
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration’s push to tackle several crises at once has reenergized the push for green jobs or those jobs which contribute to preserving or restoring the environment, including those in traditional sectors, like manufacturing. His American Jobs Plan, an infrastructure investment proposal that... Read More
The transition to remote work this past year happened a lot more quickly than many expected, which suggests organizations were “already working in a digital environment, we just had not realized it,” said Tatyana Mamut, senior vice president of new products at Pendo yesterday. Companies have... Read More
