Claims For Jobless Benefits Near 5-Year Low

[dmallind]

6. You may be less so if you understood it

Thursday reports' headline numbers cited here are of INITIAL claims - absolutely fuck all, in any way shape or form, to do with expired benefits. It's the number of people who started a claim, which may never be completed, may be rejected, or may be approved, and in the worst possible case is two years away from expiring benefits.

Nor is it a measure of job creation, merely job losses. It is a one sided metric which does not even uniquely drive the unemployment rate. To get that we need to see the number of people who got jobs in the same week - a number that is not and likely cannot accurately be reported. We must wait for the monthly household survey to get the result of the two (although it's worth clearing up another common but asinine misconception in advance there too - the UE rate does not depend on or even report on benefit receipt or eligibility either. You can have used up your benefits decades ago and still be counted as long as you looked for work just once in the last year for U6).