For the first time since 4/4/20, the number of new claims for unemployment increased for the week. Oddly, the increase of 109K is small for the time of pandemic, it would be equal to about 4 weeks of new claims before the pandemic hit.
As I continue to sort out what this means, I’ll continue giving the same stats as provided for recent weeks.
The number of people drawing unemployment the number of new claims, and the resulting number of new jobs:
| week | new | back to | # drawing |
| ended | claims | work | unempl. |
| 20.29 | |||
| 6/13/2020 | 1.54 | 2.60 | 19.23 |
| 6/20/2020 | 1.48 | 1.95 | 18.76 |
| 6/27/2020 | 1.41 | 2.41 | 17.76 |
| 7/4/2020 | 1.31 | 1.77 | 17.30 |
| 7/11/2020 | 1.31 | 2.41 | 16.20 |
| 7/18/2020 | 1.42 |
Data source
Weekly press release from the Department of labor: Unemployment insurance weekly claims
Number of people drawing unemployment
Here is the weekly tally of people drawing unemployment, which is revised in the subsequent week:
- 20.29M revised down from 20.5M- 6/13/20
- 19.23M revised down from 19.52M – 6/20/20
- 18.76M revised down from 19.29M – 6/27/20
- 17.76M revised down from 18.06M – 7/4/20
- 17.30M revised down from 17.34M – 7/11/20
- 16.20M – 7/18/20
Seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate
The number of people drawing unemployment is dropping each week due to the number of new jobs. The trend of adjustments is the number is revised down every week for the last month.
You can see the advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate is slowly dropping:
| date | revised | prelim |
| 6/20/2020 | 12.9% | 13.2% |
| 7/27/2020 | 12.2% | 12.4% |
| 7/4/2020 | 11.8% | 11.9% |
| 7/11/2020 | 11.1% |
Summary of new claims and running total
Below is my running tally of the new unemployment claims. Table shows weekly claims in millions and as a percentage of February civilian labor force. Several subtotals are presented.
| unemployed | % of Feb | |
| 2/1 to 3/14 ave. | 0.22 | |
| —— | —- | |
| 3/21/20 | 3.31 | 2.0% |
| 3/28/20 | 6.87 | 4.2% |
| 4/4/20 | 6.62 | 4.0% |
| 4/11/20 | 5.24 | 3.2% |
| 4/18/20 | 4.44 | 2.7% |
| 4/25/20 | 3.84 | 2.3% |
| earlier | ||
| 5/2/20 | 3.17 | 1.9% |
| 5/9/20 | 2.69 | 1.6% |
| 5/16/20 | 2.45 | 1.5% |
| 5/23/20 | 2.12 | 1.3% |
| 5/30/20 | 1.88 | 1.1% |
| 6/6/20 | 1.57 | 1.0% |
| 6/13/20 | 1.54 | 0.9% |
| 6/20/20 | 1.48 | 0.9% |
| 6/27/20 | 1.41 | 0.9% |
| 7/4/20 | 1.31 | 0.8% |
| 7/11/20 | 1.30 | 0.8% |
| 7/18/20 | 1.42 | 0.9% |
| —- | —- | |
| shutdown subtotal | 52.64 | 32.0% |
| 2/20 civilian labor force | 164.54 |