Stuck at 60

Thursday, July 08, 2021

We follow the weekly California new claims for unemployment insurance benefits as an indicator of the direction of the state's labor market and economy. We seem to be stuck at around 60,000 new weekly claims, a level above the pre-pandemic 40,000 claims - as shown in the chart above. It is clear from the chart that the longer run trend is down, but we ain't there yet.

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