The Briefing Room
General Category => Economy/Business => Topic started by: mystery-ak on June 23, 2022, 01:34:32 pm
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Jobless claims fall to 229,000 as labor market retains strength
by Zachary Halaschak, Economics Reporter |
| June 23, 2022 08:33 AM
The number of new applications for unemployment benefits dropped by 2,000 last week to 229,000 as the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates to rein in explosive inflation.
While initial jobless claims were largely below 200,000 from February until May, they have been pushing slightly higher over the past few weeks as fears grow that the Fed’s historic tightening could knock the economy into a recession.
Around this time in June of 2021, new claims were averaging over 400,000 per week. The decline since then shows how far the country’s economic recovery has come since the pandemic.
"We think claims have probably found a new floor around the 225k mark, still a relatively low level but above the first quarter average. While labor markets remain tight and we expect job growth to continue even as the economy slows, reports of layoffs in some sectors are on the rise," economists with Oxford Economics said.
The lowest number of recent jobless claims was the 166,000 tallied in mid-March. That represents the fewest number of new weekly claims since 1968.
The persistence of extremely high inflation has raised fears that the Fed might tighten monetary policy enough to tip the country into recession. Many economists thought inflation had peaked when it fell to an 8.3% annual rate in April. But then May’s consumer price index report showed inflation rising again to 8.6%, the highest since 1981.
more
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/jobless-claims-labor-market-strength
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Labor Force Participation Rate - 62.3%
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Labor Force Participation Rate - 62.3%
How are they counting that, because I have no doubt that more than a few of the jobs being held are second jobs by people that can't survive on just one. Hell if I wasn't disabled I would be looking for a job to help survive, but I'm worried that social sescrewity would use it as an excuse to reduce my payments.
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Labor Force Participation Rate = the number of people eligible to work who are working. Taking the inverse of that, 37.3 % of people eligible to work are choosing not to (e.g. young adults in college full time, stay-at-home moms and dads, people sitting on their asses collecting unemployment, welfare parents, etc.)
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Labor Force Participation Rate - 62.3%
And anecedcotally from what I have seen, that number seems generous.
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Lies. Damn lies and statistics from the Biden Admin.
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It was above 66% when Bush was in office. It fell below 63% under Obama. Trump got it back up to 63.4% before the Democrats ordered everyone not to work.