Initial unemployment claims
by henrycopeland
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
Two of the leading (bleeding) edges of an economy are new hire and new fires. The latter shows up in initial unemployment claims, a number that is released weekly by the labor department. Here’s a chart of seasonally adjusted claims over the last 40 years.
The latest reading was 375,000, up from the previous week’s 306,000. We’re still well below previous peaks were:
10/82: 695,000
3/91: 509,000
9/01:517,000
(Here’s the DOL chart generator: