US Initial Jobless Claims, provided by the US Department of Labor, provides data on how many new people have filed for unemployment benefits in the previous week.
We can use initial jobless claims to gauge the economy with respect to employment. As more new people file for unemployment benefits, fewer individuals in the economy have jobs.
Historically, initial jobless claims tended to reach peaks towards the end of recessionary periods such as on March 21, 2009 with a value of 661,000 new filings.
The initial jobless claims at the end of the “global financial crisis” is nothing compared to what we are seeing today.
US Initial Jobless Claims is at a current level of 3.839 million, down from 4.442 million last week and up from 230,000.0 one year ago. Over 30 million Americans have no filed for unemployment.
Continued jobless claims is about 18 million.
It’s in uncharted territory. We’ve never seen job losses to this magnitude.
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