Speaker 1: We actually got some really good economic news this morning that I want to
talk about a little bit. We are now at the pandemic low for new unemployment claims. These
are reported weekly jobless claims. Another two hundred and ninety three thousand people
filed new claims last week. That is the new pandemic era low, and we've subsequently hit
lower and lower lows. The U.S. posted a much larger than expected drop in initial unemployment
claims last week, bringing the numbers of those newly unemployed back toward their pre-virus
pace. The Labor Department released jobless claims this morning. Initial claims ended for
the week ended October nine. That's last week. Two hundred and ninety three thousand was the
actual number of new jobless claims they were expecting 320000 in terms of continuing claims
2.5 nine million versus two point sixty seven million expected. These are the smallest number
of new filings since March of 2020, and jobless claims have been inching closer and closer to
pre-pandemic levels. So there is a slowdown in firings, layoffs and separations. Reopenings are
taking place. Demand for workers is resurging, so there's a few different stories here.
First is there's the narrative from the right about lazy people who now want to stay home and
collect enhanced unemployment. The enhanced unemployment is, I believe it is over in all
states, although there may be some states that still have funds left and are continuing it. But
at the federal level, the enhanced unemployment is done. As predicted, there were relatively few
people who were literally saying I would rather just collect unemployment than work. Although any
social insurance system is going to have some free riders, we don't really care about free riders
as long as the system at the macro level is well calibrated and achieves what it's
supposed to achieve. Enhanced unemployment was actually one of the biggest saving graces
for millions of people during the pandemic. The fact that there were some free riders, I'm sure,
doesn't really change that, but as expected. As it is phasing out, people are getting back to work.
New jobless claims are going lower and lower and lower and are almost indistinguishable now
from the numbers we were seeing shortly before the pandemic. So we've almost zero to that out.
Number two point that's relevant here. There have been those on the right now opportunistically
saying that vaccine requirements and mandates are going to keep unemployment rates up because
people are going to say, Oh, I've got to be vaccinated or, oh, I've got to be tested. No,
I'd rather not work unemployment or not. That doesn't seem to be happening. It never passed the
sniff test to begin with, and it doesn't appear to be happening as the new unemployment numbers
keep going lower, lower and lower. A few other. There's actually a graph here that we can look at.
U.S. jobless claims reach fresh pandemic era low As you can see, there was this
major major spike in April of 2020, where there were between six and seven million new claims,
and those continued to decline five million, four million then into the threes and twos.
We eventually got under the one million mark in the summer, last summer, August of twenty, etc.
And basically with just a little bit of a spike right at the start of 2021,
continuing to decline, going lower and lower. Now it's not all rainbows and ginger snaps.
Yahoo Finance rates Even as the number of those newly unemployed improves lingering concerns over
the coronavirus, keep a lid on further progress in the recovery. Many individuals still on the
sidelines of the labor force. Demand for workers has outpaced supply. Job openings are at a near
record high of more than ten point four million in August, so there are still many jobs available.
Many jobs available. Rubella Farooqui, who is the chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics,
wrote shortages are a severe constraint of the labor market currently. Overall, the labor
labor market remains on a gradual path towards pre-pandemic health. The slowdown in the pace of
job gains and still depressed participation rates are reminders that the process will
take some time, which is fine. This is, we don't know, in an economy as large as the United States
shocks to the system where things happen. As quickly as that, which happened in March and
April of 2020 are rare and they're not good for the economy. It's that those are the types of
things that cause further follow on calamities of different kinds in terms of supply chain,
in terms of all the different things that we've been talking about. So it would be expected that
as we hopefully gradually continue to see cases decline, deaths decline in the United States,
that we would see the labor market recover. But this, although these are the best numbers of the
pandemic so far, there are still limitations to the economy now, next week, probably next week.
We're going to talk about wages because one of the big kind of debates that has surfaced in terms of
we need workers and we can't get them has been the right saying, well,
you can't get them because they're lazy people collecting unemployment at home,
and they would prefer to do that. The left has said this is an issue of you're not paying enough.
If you want to get workers free market right, offer a higher wage and then you'll have more
people interested in working for you. We're going to dig into the wage issue next week and look at
so-called various quality jobs high, medium and low quality jobs as they're sometimes described.
We're still putting together all the data. We're going to look at that next week, next week.
If you have a story to tell. About your employment path and the decisions you made based
on unemployment insurance that was or was not available right into info at David Pakman dot com