Initial jobless claims unexpectedly rose for the third week in a row, according to the Department of Labor’s weekly survey…(DOL)
- The advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims were up 7,000 to 251,000 for the week ending July 16th. Economists had projected that claims would be flat for the week.
- California saw the biggest jump in claims with 3,815 new claims for the week followed by South Carolina (+2,992) and Georgia (+2,818).
Continuing claims were also up more than expected with claims up 51k to 1.384M for the week ending July 9th.
As the labor market loosens, along with downward trending economic data, talks of recession are getting louder. However, Mike Larson, Senior Analyst at Weiss Ratings, noted after the jobless data that we aren’t in a recession…yet. “The jobless claims numbers (251K vs. 240k forecast), that’s an 8-month high. The trend is clear. We’re not in recession territory yet in my opinion. But my longer-term call has been that we will be by late-2022/early-2023. Nothing I’ve seen since making it has changed that thesis.”