Higher March Jobless Claims Add to Signs of Cooling Labor Market
Filings for unemployment benefits were higher than previously thought in recent weeks, in a sign of easing demand for workers as the labor market slowly cools.
Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, reached nearly 250,000 a week in mid-March, roughly 50,000 higher than previously reported, the Labor Department said Thursday. The change reflects revised calculations that strip out seasonal fluctuations in economic activity, the department added.
The March average of weekly claims was a seasonally adjusted 237,750, higher than the average level of less than 200,000 before the changes. Claims declined by 18,000 to 228,000 in the week ended April 1.
“A rising trend in claims has been a key missing part of the labor market story, but it is now clear layoffs are increasing,” said
Ian Shepherdson,
chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
The revisions better adjust for pandemic-related factors and provide a more accurate picture of current levels of claims, the Labor Department added. Waves of layoffs have hit technology, finance and other industries in recent months, but those developments haven’t been broadly reflected in claims figures.
Stephen Stanley,
chief U.S. economist at Santander, urged caution in interpreting the updated claims figures, but said the revisions suggested layoff announcements are starting to show up in them.
“In my nearly 30 years of tracking these unemployment insurance data, I can never remember an annual seasonal factor revision like this,” he said. “Having said that, it is true that the trend in seasonally adjusted initial claims is noticeably higher.”
Goldman Sachs
also cautioned against reading too much into the changes. “The apparent deterioration would reflect the end of a technical distortion rather than a sharp jump in the true pace of claims,” Goldman Sachs economists said.
Continuing claims, which reflect the number of people seeking ongoing unemployment benefits, increased by 6,000 from the previous week’s revised level to 1.8 million in the week ended March 25. That was the highest level for continuing claims since December 2021, the department said. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag.
The Labor Department on Friday will release its March employment report, offering a broad picture of the health of the jobs market. Job gains and the unemployment rate will show how the labor market fared as the U.S. economy hit an unusual rough patch when two regional banks failed and federal regulators intervened to stabilize the financial system.
Write to Gwynn Guilford at [email protected]
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Filings for unemployment benefits were higher than previously thought in recent weeks, in a sign of easing demand for workers as the labor market slowly cools.
Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, reached nearly 250,000 a week in mid-March, roughly 50,000 higher than previously reported, the Labor Department said Thursday. The change reflects revised calculations that strip out seasonal fluctuations in economic activity, the department added.
The March average of weekly claims was a seasonally adjusted 237,750, higher than the average level of less than 200,000 before the changes. Claims declined by 18,000 to 228,000 in the week ended April 1.
“A rising trend in claims has been a key missing part of the labor market story, but it is now clear layoffs are increasing,” said
Ian Shepherdson,
chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
The revisions better adjust for pandemic-related factors and provide a more accurate picture of current levels of claims, the Labor Department added. Waves of layoffs have hit technology, finance and other industries in recent months, but those developments haven’t been broadly reflected in claims figures.
Stephen Stanley,
chief U.S. economist at Santander, urged caution in interpreting the updated claims figures, but said the revisions suggested layoff announcements are starting to show up in them.
“In my nearly 30 years of tracking these unemployment insurance data, I can never remember an annual seasonal factor revision like this,” he said. “Having said that, it is true that the trend in seasonally adjusted initial claims is noticeably higher.”
Goldman Sachs
also cautioned against reading too much into the changes. “The apparent deterioration would reflect the end of a technical distortion rather than a sharp jump in the true pace of claims,” Goldman Sachs economists said.
Continuing claims, which reflect the number of people seeking ongoing unemployment benefits, increased by 6,000 from the previous week’s revised level to 1.8 million in the week ended March 25. That was the highest level for continuing claims since December 2021, the department said. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag.
The Labor Department on Friday will release its March employment report, offering a broad picture of the health of the jobs market. Job gains and the unemployment rate will show how the labor market fared as the U.S. economy hit an unusual rough patch when two regional banks failed and federal regulators intervened to stabilize the financial system.
Write to Gwynn Guilford at [email protected]
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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