Unemployment Insurance Claims

In each Economic Update, the Research staff analyzes recently released economic indicators and addresses what these indicators mean for REALTORS® and their clients. Today’s update discusses unemployment insurance claims.

• Employment conditions continue to improve in May based on the initial unemployment insurance claims data released today by the Department of Labor.
• 370,000 initial claims for unemployment insurance were filed for the week ending May 19 under the regular state programs; this is lower than the 372,000 claims (revised) filed the previous week and last year’s 424,000 initial claims. The number of initial claims has been trending down since 2009 when initial claims hit a peak of about 600,000.
• The insured unemployed, or those who have continuing insurance claims, is also down to 3.26 million from the previous week’s 3.29 million.
• The decline in insurance claims means that the economy is not shedding as many jobs, which means greater job stability for more people; with income stability, households can look to making longer-term investments such as purchasing a home.
• Partly based on this trend, NAR expects about 2 million net new jobs to be added to the economy in 2012.