Jobless 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.

• Good news this week on the job market after last week’s report that the unemployment rate came in below 8 percent. Initial claims for unemployment insurance fell by a sizeable 30,000 claims to 339,000 claims for the week of October 6.  Please be mindful that the jobless data revisions have generally tended to be upward, meaning that this figure is likely to be revised up at next week’s report.
• The level of initial claims is now moving towards the normal level of about 300,000 claims.  Meanwhile, the level of continuing claims dropped to 3.3 million in the past week from a peak of about 6 million in 2009.
• A lower level of initial unemployment insurance claims indicates that less people are being laid off while a lower level of continuing claims can indicate that more people are able to find work so they don’t have to file continuing claims (as well as indicating that the person has reached the maximum entitlement period to claims insurance). Falling claims are signs of a job market recovery. NAR forecasts 1.4 million net jobs in 2012 and 2.2 million net jobs in 2013.