The job market is improving, but the rate of improvement is tantalizingly slow.
New weekly jobless claims in regular state unemployment programs fell for the week ended on June 19 to 411,000. Economists had expected a drop to 380,000. The prior week saw a (revised) 418,000 new claims.
Continuing claims, where the data lags by a week, were 3.39 million for th week ended June 12. Economists had expected 3.46 million continuing claims for unemployment. The revised total for the prior week was 418,000.
At 411,000 new claims the weekly figure was still above the still well above the pre-pandemic 2019 average of just over 200,000 new claims per week. Continuing jobless claims sank to the lowest level since March 21, 2020.
All these figures are for regular state unemployment programs. Close to two dozen states have begun an early phaseout of federal enhanced unemployment benefits. On June 12, Alaska, Iowa, Missouri and Mississippi became the first states to significantly reduce or fully slash enhanced federal unemployment benefits ahead of their official, national September expiration date. On June 19, another eight states—Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming—began their own phaseouts of these unemployment benefits.
The federal Pandemic unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment programs, aimed at workers who don’t quantify for regular state programs, saw continuing claims increase for the week ended June 5 to 11.2 million.
That brings the continuing claims total across all programs to 14.8 million workers. That’s a big drop from the 31.3 million reported in the week a year earlier, but it’s still way above historical levels.
Stocks climbed today on the news–on the assumption, I’d say, that a slower rate of improvement in the job market means that the Federal Reserve will be under less pressure to raise interest rates sooner rather than later.
As of 2 p.m. the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 0.61% and the Down Jones Industrial Average had climbed 1.01%. The NASDAQ Composite was ahead 0.61% and the NASDAQ 100 had gained 0.63%. The small cap Russell 2000 was higher by 0.86. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) had taken on 0.97%.
The CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) dropped 3% to 15.83. The yield on the 10-yar Treasury held steady at 1.49%.
