Initial Jobless Claims and UI on Right Track
This article features a quick overview of the latest key statistics for the U.S. and Canadian economies, presented mainly in graph form.
For starters, U.S. initial jobless claims have finally dropped to a reasonable level, just above 400,000 for the week ending May 22nd. Prior to the pandemic, with the economy chugging along near full speed, initial jobless claims consistently sat between 200,000 and 300,000.
Therefore, once they fall below 300,000 again, there’ll be good reason to believe that a true return to ‘normal’ has been achieved.
The number of individuals receiving unemployment insurance is also trending down in a positive way. The latest weekly figure was 3.642 million, a falloff of nearly -100,000. In the best of times, the number is shy of two million.
The AEC Lens