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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.
- The initial jobless claims are continuing to show signs of volatility with an increase of 10,000 last week. This week's increase follows last week's substantial decline. The Labor Department did not discuss any special circumstances which may have led to this increase.
- The total level is now at 424,000 which is above the critical 400,000 level needed for improvement in the job market. Even when looking at the states that had the largest increases, no evident pattern that emerges.
- Florida with 1,340 new claims had the largest increase, from construction, manufacturing, service industries, and agriculture. Following Florida were Georgia (+747), New Mexico (+415), Idaho (+282), and Hawaii (+236) as the states that posted the largest increases in new claims, while the largest decreases were in California (-6,828), Michigan (-6,740), New York (-2,569), Alabama (-2,093) and Wisconsin (-2,079).
- Fewer layoffs came largely from the service and automobile industries. If jobless claims stay up as they have in the past week and do not trend down, NAR expects less than 1.5 million net new jobs in the next 12 months, which would barely lower the unemployment rate.
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