Still at Pre-Pandemic Level

Sunday, May 29, 2022

Our weekly look at new weekly claims for California unemployment benefits indicates that the series remains at pre-pandemic levels. By this measure, there is no sign of a recession building. That's the good news. The qualifying remark is that what people are looking for is largely a policy change aimed at fighting inflation or some reaction to political or international events. Any of these, other than a new pandemic-produced lockdown, would take some time to be felt. Still, for now, the state's economy is not producing negative labor market effects.

As always, the latest data on new claims are at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.