For the first time since 4/4/20, the number of new claims for unemployment increased for the 8/15/20 reporting date. Oddly, the increase of 109K is small for the time of pandemic but 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.
Since the middle of June, which is when I started tracking this metric, the number of new jobs has exceeded the newly lost jobs by 5 million.
Looks to me like these stats suggest the economy is recovery, but at a slow pace, with unprecedented numbers of people still out of work at the same time as an extremely high number of new claims for unemployment are still rolling in.
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. |
| (imputed) | 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 | 0.66 | 16.95 |
| 7/25/2020 | 1.43 | 2.29 | 16.09 |
| 8/1/2020 | 1.19 | 1.80 | 15.48 |
| 8/8/2020 | 0.97 | 1.61 | 14.84 |
| 8/15/2020 | 1.11 | ||
| less prior wk | (1.11) | ||
| — | — | ||
| running total | 12.06 | 17.51 |
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
- 16.95M revised down from 17.02M – 7-18-20
- 16.090M revised down from 16.106M – 7/25/20
- 15.480M revised down from 15.486M – 8/1/20
- 14.844M – 8/8/20
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% | |
| 7/18/2020 | 11.6% | |
| 7/25/2020 | 11.0% | |
| 8/1/2020 | 10.6% | |
| 8/8/2020 | 10.2% |
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.
| 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% |
| 7/25/20 | 1.44 | 0.9% |
| 8/1/20 | 1.19 | 0.7% |
| 8/8/20 | 0.97 | 0.6% |
| 8/15/20 | 1.11 | 0.7% |
| —- | —- | |
| shutdown subtotal | 57.34 | 34.8% |
| 2/20 civilian labor force | 164.54 |