US Jobless Claims Fall For The First Time In 4 Weeks!

More good news for the US labor market, Jobless Claims have resumed their decent last week, after 3 weeks of climbing.

This continues to signal that the US economy is beginning to see strong growth, not just recovery, in the job market after several years of being plagued by high unemployment after the 2008 financial crash. This is consistent with the Fed’s announcement that interest rates will raise this year.

When looking at the labor market, there are three reports that economists and analysts are always looking out for: the Unemployment Rate, the New Hires, and the Jobless Claims report. The relationship between these three categories can tell us a lot about the labor market as a whole; the Unemployment Rate alone will tell us how many people are out of work and looking for a job, the New Hires tells us how many jobs were created, and the Jobless Claims tells us how many people lost their jobs in the last week. So by comparing them, you can see what has happened in the job market in the last week, month, or year.

For example, if the unemployment rate is unchanged, but the jobless claims and new hires both go up, we know that no new people entered the labor force, and the number of people who lost their jobs was equal to the number of people who got new ones, so the labor market as a whole is probably unchanged.

Conversely, if the unemployment rate goes up, while new hires and jobless claims stay the same, it means that more people who previously were not looking for a job just entered the labor market, so you have more people total looking for jobs.

For more information about any of these rates, visit the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For more information on this week’s jobless claims report,

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