Daily Economic Update: Jobless Claims

Each day the Research staff takes a look at recently released economic indicators, addressing what these indicators mean for REALTORS® and their clients. Today’s update highlights jobless claims.

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  New jobless claims continue moving down with 382,000 initial claims reported last week, down from the revised 388,000.
• The four-week is also down more than 5,000 from a month ago and it averages 389,500. Continuing claims showed a 100,000 decline over the past month and are currently at 3.746 million.
• The largest increases in initial claims were in Texas, California, Oregon, New Jersey, Arkansas, while the largest decreases were in North Carolina, Massachusetts, Florida, Georgia, and Oklahoma. There had been 1.3 million net new job additions in the past 12 months to March.
• Assuming that jobless claims continue to trend down, NAR expects about 1.5 to 2 million net new jobs in the next 12 months.